your love is anemic
by sassiefrazzy
Summary: The Lone Wanderer and Butch have always collided, and they continue to do so. In more ways than one.
1. Chapter 1

**Warning** : teenagers making adult decisions they shouldn't be doing run rampant throughout the story. None of their behaviour is condoned. I'm just here to play in the bathtub. Also, I don't have a beta so any errors, anything confusing, please let me know.

* * *

They called her ice queen in class. A robot.

 _Mae squinted under the bright house lights, stopped-up her ears to quiet the murmurs in the crowd. Her fingers pressed into the stitched laces, squeezed the ball behind her back._

Their resident Mr. Handy had more emotion protocols within its programming than she did. She was cold, unfeeling.

 _She blinked the sweat from her eyes, blew out a breath to ruffle her bangs. Her stance loosened as she brought her mitt and the ball up to her chest, pausing before her wind-up._

She wasn't, of course, not by a long shot. But the nicknames rang true for many of her classmates. And silence in the face of their harassment had been the best way to deal with their crap.

 _The ball shot out like a cannon, enough force behind it that she nearly toppled on the mound. A loud_ thwack _sang in her ears._

 _"Strike one!"_

 _The crowd went nuts. But Mae's concentration didn't break as she picked up the ball, stepped back in position._

Responding to bullying with cold looks had not won Mae many fights. That, on top of being nearly fifteen and the most flat-chested in class had put her firmly within their sights, had made her a constant target. Wally had been the one to start riding her about it, after a particularly long day of practice at the beginning of the season. If anyone ever got under her shirt, he'd yelled across the diamond, how would they know they'd gotten to second base?

She'd broken his nose that night when she went up to bat (hit a foul ball that went straight to his neanderthal face). But despite that or in spite of it, Butch had latched onto it like a mutt on a bone.

 _She took a deep breath, tried to ignore the blood pounding in her head as she focused on her catcher._

 _Tin-man,_ Butch had said with a smirk, shining the spotlight on two of Mae's worst defects. He got to insult her in double measure and with minimal effort. And Butch was nothing if not lazy.

But the worst part was that the name stuck. Mae minded, of course. But she'd become so used to the titles, the name calling. The presumptions made about her after years of the same treatment. If it wasn't Butch and Wally, it was Christine. Or Susie. Never Amata and surprisingly, never Freddie.

 _She shook her head at the signals. They'd expect a fastball. A curveball... maybe. Or was it time for that changeup..._

Up until a few months ago, she would have believed that Paul was part of that never (never-again) group in her life, too. He'd stopped teasing her after thirteen, once he'd managed to make her cry (the only one who ever had). She wasn't sure if the tears or the way she'd tried so hard to hide them had done it, but after that incident, he hadn't said a word to her. Just remained on the sidelines while his two other friends tore into her.

And then her fifteenth birthday had come around.

 _Mae spat her gum to the side, heard the ref threaten that she'd be on cleanup duty. She adjusted her cap. Flexed her fingers on the stitches._

 _Breathed._

She'd hated her birthday since that fated thirteenth. Tried to keep them as mundane as any other day. But Amata would have none of if. She insisted on always getting her a present, a token to celebrate her best friend. Ice cream with her that night had been all Mae had wanted, she'd assured her dad. She'd even pretended she couldn't see the relief on his face.

 _Mae pitched, ball propelled from her feet, up her legs and torso and through her arm, kissed by the new calluses on her fingers. She barely heard the ref above the cheering crowds._

 _"Strike two!"_

 _She finally wiped her face with a grimy sleeve, further dirtying it._

Freddie had shown up at the Diner that night, uninvited. Pepper must've mentioned something to her son after locking up the kitchen, after handing the two girls their ice cream. And with Freddie came his lab partner. Paul. They'd been studying and needed a snack break, Freddie had assured with a teasing grin.

Mae had looked at Amata in disbelief. She had been _kidding._ The same way she'd joked with Amata on her tenth birthday, asking for a date with Freddie when her best friend asked what she wanted.

'A kiss,' Mae had told Amata with a grin, ears pink even if it was in jest. 'From Paul Hannon.'

 _She crouched on the pitching mound, waited for the stands to quiet down._

Near impossible, she'd thought. No way it was happening. And besides, kidding about Freddie always hit too close to home. So she'd let her little lie float.

And somehow she'd gotten her wish. After sharing the ice cream with the boys, they had all headed back to their apartments. They had split up at the stairs, all meaning to go their separate ways. Mae and Paul had still not exchanged a word while Freddie joked and Amata kept the chatter going. But his eyes had been on her the whole time. Mae had caught him a couple of times. And he hadn't looked away.

When it was just down to them two, the silence had remained deafening. And tense. She felt it in her, coiled, hair almost standing on end from the energy in the air. When Paul had wished her a happy birthday, there was a tremor in his voice. And she had responded with a thank you, just as nervously, as he had leaned in and pressed a dry kiss to her mouth.

Her first kiss and it had been with a boy she hadn't even known she wanted one from.

But it had been good. And a few days after it happened, they were sent to retrieve boxes for Brotch in one of the supply closets. They had met in the middle again, a tentative kiss that she had initiated that time. And she would continue to do so in the following months. He would too. His soft lips and the way his eyes burned into her had become addicting, a way to express herself without words. Without anyone else knowing. Or interfering. They found each other in closets, in empty hallways. Any moment they could steal. But they kept it to the hours when they were out and about and only when they both knew no one would find them.

 _Mae pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket, stained and old and threadbare. Jonas had given it to her when she was eight and sneezed all over his lab coat. It was lucky. She used it to wipe her glasses and the sweat from her hands. Didn't trust just wiping them on her Vault issued league uniform. Wished, for a moment, that she was on a real baseball diamond with real dirt and grass and fresh air and a shining sun. Where she could clap the dirt from her hands, wouldn't worry so much about her slippery grip on the stitches._

It had become a thing between Paul and Mae. Something that after a few meetings had expanded to whispering. To hand holding. And exchanging reading material when she got it out of him that he read on occasion. When he had down time.

But if Butch, or Wally, or any of the others in their class had seen her that morning in the reactor level, they would've been completely justified with some of those names they called her.

Because Paul was breaking up with her and Mae couldn't find it in her to cry this time.

She couldn't wish for a new past time for their boring pre-scheduled afternoons if she proved them right.

 _She squinted toward home plate again, zeroed in with laser focus._

She had felt the ice settling. Sharp and cold and ready to freeze anything moving freely within her as Paul told her they couldn't see each other anymore. She almost laughed at how right they had been.

"You're really doing this?" But there was a heaviness in her chest, like a stone that was helping her sink. Helping her drown. It got heavier as the silence stretched between them, harder and harder to ignore.

"Yes, really." He had sighed, looking at anything but her. "I'm sorry."

"But why?" _Why now? Why me? Why did you even kiss me if you were just going to do this?_ But those were questions she couldn't voice. Ever. How could she? It was hard enough keeping her reactions to a minimum. She had promised herself she would never give any of them any more of herself.

Paul had shrunk a little. But his voice had been firm, sure. "My mom found out."

"So what?"

"So, she controls my every move, Mae." He'd frowned, scuffed his shoes. "Look, I know you don't get it. You're the perfect kid, straight A's and all that, but my mom's not like your dad. She doesn't trust me as well."

Neither did her dad. But it had been pointless to argue. Mae was familiar with betrayal. And being dumped and then judged about something she could and couldn't control were reasons enough to see this through to the end.

"Whatever, Paulie." She hadn't been able to look at him either, felt her insides tightening, attempting to brace for the worst. "Just head on home to your mom, make sure she wipes your ass for you."

Paul sputtered and she had been as surprised as he with her response. Where had that come from?

But it was just what was needed. He had shaken his head and muttered another 'sorry' before leaving.

And Mae had studied her feet until she was sure no tears would escape. Then she had swallowed the huge lump in her throat, taken a deep breath and headed back to class.

She took to the empty mound every time she thought of Paul in the following months. She worked on her pitches, her angles and follow through. And sometimes she pitched until her arm felt like it would fall off. Until Paul's eyes and kisses were a dull ache in her heart, another scab.

She found a grim satisfaction in it. So much so that she had flushed her pills down the toilet more than once.

And now here in the finals, feet planted on the rubber under the house lights that blinded her. The crowd was silent, expectant. Waiting.

She hid in her mitt, kept both hands close to her chest. Ran through all the names they had called her. She was more than an ice-queen, more than a robot, more than a _tin-man._

She adjusted her grip within the mitt, got into her stretch, lifted that leg and-

 _Thwack!_

 _"Strike Three!"_

She added MVP to the list of names they called her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Note** : three lil' edits that didn't make it to the final were fixed

* * *

Mae had a thing with numbers.

When she first began helping her dad and Jonas at the clinic, she was fascinated by them - the measurements and doses, recorded blood count and pressure, levels of triglycerides and resting heart rates. At eight, when Amata had been prescribed an iron supplement for her anemia, Mae could tell her what her required needs were down to the milligram after having glanced at her red blood count only a few times. They stuck with her easily, those small notations that defined a person's health. That provided a glimpse into their everyday existence. The almighty Overseer had them and even her elusive dad had a list of them that Mae kept a close eye on.

She found something grounding in the fact that everyone in the vault was made up of numbers.

So when she woke up in the middle of the night, shaking and sweaty with her sheets all on the floor, she looked to her Pip-boy. She didn't try to remember what woke her, the dream already fading. She took her own pulse as she counted out the seconds, her breathing slowly returning to normal.

3:46 a.m. and a resting heart rate seventy-four beats per minute. Better than some nights, she reckoned.

Recording the time and heart rate in her personal log on the device, she lay there for a moment. Looked at the darkened ceiling. Her apartment was quiet, the soft snores that would sometimes escape from her dad's room missing. Was he at the clinic still? Did he remember that school started today?

She groaned. Would her sessions have to start up again? She hoped not. Their existence was a complete drag that left her drained for _days._ It was hard enough staying afloat day by day, especially with her routine shot to shit. With school starting again, some normalcy would return. But so might the sessions. And they would require her to be in top form, to keep all things normal and even keel if she didn't want -

She broke out in hives just thinking about it.

Baseball training was weeks away. When she had training on her schedule on top of school and homework and her evenings in the clinic, exhaustion would take over, her brain and all its thoughts taking a back seat. Her mind wouldn't be able to do that thing where it went into loops (round and round with no way to go, like a hamster in a wheel). And being too busy to have time to think was always a blessing.

She swallowed and sat up, pushing her unruly mess of hair out of her face. The stillness made her insomnia worse. She grabbed her glasses and slipped into her discarded vault suit, stuffing a clean suit and a spare set of underclothes in her school bag. She felt inside for her small bottle. Clenched it with shaky fingers for a moment before she slipped out of her apartment with a low hiss of released air.

Wandering the halls in her socks, she kept a lookout for the 4:00 am patrol but didn't see anyone. She checked the clinic first, knew the code to unlock it. Finding no one in the main area, she peeked into her dad's office through the slats in the blinds.

Her dad was asleep at his desk, slumped over at an awkward angle. But it was the sight of Jonas, his long fingers resting so close to her dad's that made her tip-toe away, heart aching. If he barely noticed his own daughter at times...

She settled into the empty terminal in the main area, logged in with her password before going through old charts one by one. Until she could get in the showers without calling the security team down on her for being out during lights out.

Going through them, there was nothing in the patient files or in all the medical manuals she had gone through so far that covered how to mend a broken heart.

* * *

"Mae?"

She shifted, made sure she could see Amata as she opened one eye blearily. "Hmm?"

"Lunch is almost over. Did you eat something?"

"Two coffees and a sandwich," Mae said at the end of a yawn, forcing herself to sit up.

"Half a sandwich," Freddie corrected, his mouth full of the other half. He reached for the chips Amata still had on her tray and Amata made a face and shoved him. "What? I'm a growing boy."

"You called yourself a Man during biology earlier," Amata pointed out, trying to slide her chips away from his seeking hands. They started a small fight over them while Mae sat back in the booth groggily and slowly came back to life.

Day one was halfway done and had been surprisingly smooth so far. She drained her lukewarm coffee and stood with the others as Freddie returned all their trays.

"We've got a free period after history," Amata reminded her with a nudge. "Maybe you could catch up on some sleep then?"

"Sleep? No…." Freddie plopped his arm over her shoulder, Mae's knees nearly buckling under the unexpected weight. Freddie had grown during the last year. Unsurprisingly, Mae hadn't. "Come on, you two. We've got strategizing to do."

"Ugh, we're doing this again?"

"What? All of a sudden, you're too cool to hang out with us, Amata?"

Amata groaned but followed and Mae found she couldn't hide the smile that was tugging at her lips as they all meandered back to class.

* * *

"I'm tired of being the AntAgonizer," Amata muttered.

"But her fire ants are so _deadly,_ " Freddie said with a grin as he spread out the drawings on graph paper that made up their 'dungeon'. The tape holding it together would have to be reinforced, Mae noted. "Lucky for you, we're starting a new campaign this year. So you have your pick of-"

"I chose the War Maiden," Mae called immediately, biting her lip to keep from giggling when Amata shot her a dirty look.

"Maula for Mae it is." Freddie made a brief notation.

"Freddie is going to be Grognak, of course."

All three turned in their seats to look at Susie who was hovering behind them. She was smirking, a hint of malice in her smile as she took in their small set up.

"Of course." Freddie grinned, completely at ease even though Grognak was what the other boys had teased him with when they were small. "How'd you guess?"

"Those biceps, maybe." Mae nearly gagged when Susie gave a small laugh, her attention all on Freddie. She looked at the rest of them, eyes flicking over Amata and Mae before going back to her target. "Is there room for one more?"

"What? No."

Susie's eyes went from Freddie to Mae and Mae realized that had come out of her mouth, in her own deadpan tone.

"She's kidding. The more the merrier."

"Do you know the rules, Susie?" Amata, ever the peacemaker smiled her kind smile and made room for the additional girl.

"Yeah, I suggest you go over this before we start," Freddie agreed, bringing out their color-coded rule book (in Amata's neat and precise handwriting) and handing it to Susie. "Check it out. Let me know if you're still interested once you get through it."

Susie looked a little askance at Freddie as she glanced down at the book in her hands. But she smiled at him, nodding. "Sure. How 'bout we talk about this tomorrow? Maybe during lunch?"

"We always sit in the same spot."

 _Freddie, you idiot._

Mae watched in trepidation as Susie smiled and walked to her own usual table, collapsing into a chair and starting to whisper furiously to Christine. A moment later, the trio of Wally, Butch and Paul joined the two girls, much to Mae's dismay.

"What the hell are those idiots doing in the library," Mae muttered, thumping her head on the table.

"Didn't you hear? Wally is going to be held back if his grades don't get better," Amata murmured, patting her shoulder in comfort.

"What - again?"

But Amata shook her head. "No, he was never held back. Susie and he just ended up in the same grade. Happens when you're adopted."

"Aren't _we_ the lucky ones?"

"You missing my brother, spaz?"

Mae lifted her head from the table so quickly, she got a crick in her neck. She glared at Wally and by extension Butch, and Paul, who was lingering a little behind the other two.

"Leave us alone, Wally," Amata sighed. Freddie sat back in his chair, not engaging but not breaking eye contact.

"What? I just came here to let the spaz know Stevie says hi."

Mae looked away, hoping they'd just leave.

"Nothing to say, _tin-man?"_

"Fuck off," she muttered under her breath.

"What was that?" Butch was leaning over her now, blue eyes bright. A hunter finding prey. She got a whiff of his leather jacket, but the overwhelming scent of cigarettes invaded her senses and she scowled at him. He was suffocating and she felt trapped, her heartbeat rising and the blood pumping hot in her veins.

She pushed her chair back, hands shaking. "I said 'fuck off', DeLoria. And Wally, you let your brother know that if he wants his balls back, I had them bronzed as a trophy. We'll see if you guys show up this year."

Mae felt it hitting, could barely get out of the library and around the corner fast enough.

She made it into an empty supply closet just as she felt her throat closing up. Before she had to get down in a crouch, her head between her knees as a panic attack hit her full strength and the rest of the world was lost to her.

* * *

Amata found her later. Wiped the tears that had already dried on her face, ran calming fingers through Mae's hair when she lay her head on her oldest friend's lap.

"Are you going to tell your dad?" she murmured.

Mae breathed but kept silent. Knowing her as well as she did, Amata merely nodded and continued doing what she did with her magic hands. It was situations like these that Mae thought what a great mother Amata would be some day. And how lucky Mae was to have her.

"So what happened after I left?"

"You mean before or after Butch started going off on what you said about Stevie's balls?"

Mae snorted, a headache slowly aching right behind her eyeballs. "After."

"Well, let's see. Wally threatened he would kick Butch's ass, Butch parried with 'I'd like to see you try', and Wally deflected with a 'fuck you' before he walked back to his table, knuckles dragging on the carpet."

Mae giggled, wiping her face with her sleeve one last time before sitting up and slipping her glasses back on. "I'm kind of looking forward to playing against the boys again this year."

"If it puts you in this feisty little mood, me too," Amata said with a smile. "Now come on, I have to choose whether I'm going to be Femme-Ra or the Courser Queen this year before Susie takes one of my choices away from me."

"Why can't we choose one of the guy characters?" Mae muttered as she stood, giving Amata a hand.

"Because Freddie is a purist."

"You ready for that when you two end up married?" Mae teased, her heart feeling swollen and bruised at the thought.

"You know it's going to be a lottery, Mae. It won't be my dad's decision. He has to follow protocol."

"Sure, with your dad, I'm sure he'll keep it fair," Mae muttered as she followed her best friend out.

She was dreading tomorrow. But she tried to keep it in a positive light. Tried not to think too much on Susie or Wally or Butch. She had been right to skip a nap during free period because as soon as she sank her head on her pillow, she was out like a light.

Nothing like sleep deprivation and a panic attack to tire one out.

* * *

When Mae showed up half-asleep to class the next day, it was to find Freddie absent.

"A cold," Amata said with a shrug when she asked. "His mom said we should keep away, for now. They have him quarantined."

Freddie didn't make it back to class for the rest of the week.


	3. Chapter 3

The clock in James' office had never been louder, Jonas could attest. Another minute ticked by, the sound resonant in the otherwise still room and Jonas heaved a silent sigh, eyes flitting from the wall clock to the teenager before him. Sitting with near perfect posture, her eyes were glued to a point beyond his right shoulder, bored yet attentive. He wasn't sure how the combination worked. But the message was loud and clear and if this was a contest of wills (and he was almost positive it was), he was losing. A quiet 'good morning' was all he'd managed to get out of her.

She was so much like her father, he thought with a mixture of affection and annoyance. Careful. Guarded. Of the two, James was the outgoing one, quick with a hello and a nudge for Mae to follow along. But when it came to getting beyond that friendly doctor-single dad outer layer… Even after nearly a decade of his life working and growing closer to James, as good as their work relationship had become, Jonas was still bumping against a wall. It had gotten to a point that Jonas wondered if James even realized it was there.

"You know everything we talk about here is kept in confidence."

Mae blinked. Ran her thumb over the other nails, back and forth, polish the color of fresh bruises on each finger. It was a nervous tick, something she'd had since she was a kid. He relaxed a little at the sight.

"I won't tell your dad of anything we talk about here," he clarified again.

Her subtle fidgeting stilled, her thumb stopping. And Jonas waited.

"Isn't mental illness hereditary?"

"It's… a combination of things." Jonas answered honestly. "But yes. It can be."

Participation was progress, he reminded himself. Not what he was expecting, but questions of this sort were easy. And the doc's kid was nothing if not a hoarder of information.

"So, do you play therapist for my dad?"

"Yep." His answer had Mae's brow rising, a dark curve of skepticism. Jonas swallowed, tried to moisten a suddenly dry mouth. He'd never been good at hiding from the kid's eyes. They were a pale gray, sharp as the scalpels she polished when helping at the clinic and they pinned him, like an entomologist with an insect. "You're getting the family discount."

He almost cringed at his poor joke. But her mouth twitched, a half smile nearly forming. Jonas had a small moment of relief before her expression went back in a blink.

Two steps back, zero steps forward.

"So, you have the G.O.A.T this year... Are you nervous?"

She shook her head.

"Good. No reason to be, in my opinion. They don't always get it right, anyway."

Mae's eyes bore into him as he said this and the silence stretched between them, uncomfortable. Until Jonas finally caved. He handed her a refill of pills, but before he could he could send her on her way-

"You know the drill, sport." He held out a water bottle for her.

She sighed, popping one into her mouth and taking a quick swallow of water. He waited until she opened her mouth to show him it was gone before she left.

In his notes, he scribbled "chose to spend her hour in contemplation." He didn't include her question or the multitude of answers she had gleaned from his response. Mae was intelligent. No one in the Vault had been trained in psychiatry, they merely did the best they could. Without an active chaplain, the duty fell on James to figure out. And while all the others had their sessions with the Doc, Mae was the lucky one that got Jonas.

The school year was in full swing already and with the baseball season drawing near, Mae was coping with her VDS. The doc had even lowered the dosage upon her request, so long as she sat in for her weekly therapy sessions. James had done the best he could with Mae, given what the Vault provided. It was all he could ever hope to give his Wasteland born daughter. Jonas was sure even as a pang of nostalgia hit him.

He wouldn't concede he'd he lost sight of the little girl with loose curls and the shy smile. With an inkling on how to approach their next meeting already growing, he returned to his duties with a firmer resolve.

He put his notes on their session away, forgetting to tick off one of the boxes on his checklist.

* * *

The nausea wasn't the worst part.

Throwing up had become almost welcome when faced with the alternative. When the meds dissolved within her she'd turn into a zombie, and that was the worst. She had lost entire days, especially in the beginning when her dad had first prescribed them. They'd all run together into one colorless blur, a fog that wouldn't lift.

Mae dry heaved again but nothing came out, her insides already long gone in the toilet. She flushed, huddling in the stall and wiping her face with her sleeve. Checked her Pip-boy for the time. She had missed the end of history and the first few minutes of her free period. With Freddie out again, she had left Amata alone and that wouldn't do. She rinsed out her mouth and splashed cold water on her face before heading out of the women's restroom.

The sound of a woman crying as she passed the men's restroom stopped her in her tracks and she pushed the men's door open, following the sound. She wasn't sure what she'd find, but the sight of Ellen DeLoria sobbing and fighting Butch off as he held her over the sink was… it was…

"Get the fuck out."

Butch was trying to soothe his mother. The hand brushing the hair away from her swollen face was gentle and a complete contrast to the venomous look he shot Mae's way.

"Do you, um…" She faltered as she backed up, at a complete loss on what to say. "Do you need-"

"Get. Out."

She did. Hurriedly, nearly tripping on her feet as the door closed behind her hasty exit.

She dropped numbly on a chair next to Amata's things in the library, not noticing her with Beatrice at another table. She laid her head on the cool surface and closed her eyes. The sight of Ellen's rumpled vault suit, the bruises Mae had seen on her arms… they were seared in her mind along with the look on Butch's face before he had spotted her.

She wasn't surprised when she didn't see Butch or his mother for the rest of the day.

* * *

Mae scrolled through the charts quickly while her dad was in his office. She wondered if his busy schedule had anything to do with Freddie's health issues or Ellen's current condition. As she skimmed through their files, she found nothing to help figure it out. Ellen's chart was surprisingly light, a woman who missed her yearly physicals as often as she showed. And although everyone knew she was an alcoholic, there was no mention of it in the chart she pulled up.

She frowned.

Going over her own chart, she found nothing to indicate her own issues and her relief was quick and unexpected. Amata knew. And Freddie. The notes that her dad probably had about her... Mae could only guess what he'd jotted down in the handwriting only she and Jonas were able to decipher. _Withdrawn, uncooperative, sullen._ She ticked them off mentally, listing what she would write about him if the tables were turned. _Secretive, crafty, detached._

 _Liar._

She logged off, tired and anxious to stop her mind from buzzing.

* * *

"Cohen."

Mae froze for a second but picked up the pace when his voice registered.

"Hey. I'm talking to you."

Butch grabbed her arm and pulled her aside before she scurried into class. He loomed over her and the tension in his grip, in the rough pull had her landing against the wall hard.

"Let go," she muttered, gaze averted.

"Did you open your big mouth?"

She rolled her eyes, "Because that's what I'm known for, right?"

"Don't get smart with me, twerp," he growled, shaking her and his grip tightened, forcing her back against the wall.

She tried to shove past him but he pressed closer and a cold sweat prickled under her vault suit. She swallowed, forced herself to glare at him even as her heart thundered in her chest. "Get off me."

"No. Not until you fucking get it in your head-"

"I said get off me!" She shoved harder but she barely moved him and a wildness grew in her, a desperation that she couldn't keep a lid on, no matter how hard she pushed it down. Her breathing would give her away. _Not again, not again._

Knees buckling, she dropped like a stone and used her stature to her advantage. Slipping under his legs, she darted out with a burst of speed that made her lightheaded. Twerp, he called her. She caught him right in his junk with her shoulder and an awful groaning-whine followed her as she ran past.

She skittered to a halt when she took the stairs down to the reactor, crashing into the wall after she lost her footing and slipped down the last few steps. Her heart nearly stopped when she landed on her hands instead of her face, her lungs burning for oxygen. But the fear had subsided, left behind with Butch and his bruised… ego.

She giggled. Couldn't stop once the first one escaped her. Muffling her laughter, she crawled the last couple of steps until she got to the storage room door. She jimmied open the lock after glancing behind to make sure she hadn't been followed. Locked it shut and collapsed against it to finish what she was almost positive was hysteria after getting so close to another attack.

After twenty minutes of not hearing anything but the hum and crackle of the reactor and her occasional giggle, she slumped on the floor. Stared at the ceiling in wonderment.

Playing hookie in her old shooting range was surprisingly easy. She wasn't looking forward to facing Butch and whatever he'd want to do to her after what just happened. Her BB gun was in one of the lockers and she took it apart to clean before taking a knee and aiming. She shot ten careful rounds into the green toy soldiers she had repurposed from one of the empty apartments in the level below hers. Some kid had played with them once when the Vault had housed more than what they currently had. They had talked about it, she and Amata. About what they would probably be forced to do once their time came.

She collected the little green men again, one by one lined them up for another round. No use thinking about the lottery, either.

* * *

"Where have you been?" Amata asked, setting her schoolbag down.

Mae was halfway through her soup and already contemplating another serving so she didn't respond immediately. She loved soup day, had smelled the split pea and fake bacon in her sleep. She might've napped through lunch had it been cold sandwiches again.

"Downstairs," she shrugged, taking another spoonful. It was a thin soup today, but it was smoky.

"What happened?"

She hesitated, catching sight of Butch as he walked into the cafeteria. Her eyes met his for a brief moment before she turned back to Amata, feeling a heat creeping up her neck.

"Just a bad day," she murmured, looking back at him as the lie slipped past her lips.

She met his eyes. Frowned at his obvious anger as her own clawed at her insides. Felt his eyes burning a hole into her from the other side of the room as she went back to her soup.

Nope, she wouldn't say a word about what she'd seen. She wouldn't prove him right. He had no idea how quiet she could keep a secret.


	4. Chapter 4

"Mr. Brotch tells me you missed school yesterday."

Mae wanted to sigh but ignored the urge. Had to push it down along with the temptation to slouch in her seat, to become smaller. She focused on the bobblehead on his desk instead, the Vault-tec mascot grinning.

"What happened?"

"I overslept."

"Past three in the afternoon?"

She flicked the bobblehead before her fidgeting began, fingers twitching at his tone. The painted grin bounced and twisted, a streak of white slicing through a plastic face. "It was a bad night."

"... Are the sessions with Jonas not helping? Do we need to adjust your prescription?"

" _No,_ dad _._ I'm fine." One time. She skipped school _one_ time. There was a reason she was a model student, it kept her out of his radar. Yet some portion of the truth wanted out. To test the waters, explore how deep. "I couldn't sleep. It just happened to be a few days in a row already."

"You haven't mentioned any trouble." James frowned. She saw it from the corner of her eye.

"I've been handling it."

His silence was somehow worse than if he'd pointed out how she obviously wasn't. And she hated moments like these. The quiet. It wasn't companionable. All they made her aware of was how little she could pick up from him, how unreadable he was to her. She knew it was the same for him. He seemed to be equally lost as to what went on in her head. Maybe with her mother around to act as a buffer, this family would have worked better.

"Sweetheart, you have to let me know if things are getting overwhelming. VDS affects everyone differently and the last thing I want is for you to suffer when we can prevent it."

Mae nodded. Looked away.

"You haven't been taking your medication."

"I have," she protested, an honest answer counting the pill she took with Jonas yesterday.

"Have you suffered any other symptoms in the past week?"

She stiffened. "No."

He sighed. Saw straight through her. "What's keeping you up, honey?"

Mae felt something prickle within her at the question, deep inside in a part she kept buried. She swallowed the saliva in her mouth, blinked her eyes rapidly. She met his gaze finally. "Nothing. I just... it gets too quiet at home." _Without you,_ she did not add.

James nodded and she detected a softening in his eyes, an understanding. "Maybe Amata can stay over a couple of nights? Or you can have a sleepover at her place - you've done that and slept through the night before right?"

Mae swallowed again, but it was to a hollowness in her throat, a feeling that spread from her chest cavity. She shouldered her bag as she stood. "Was there something else?"

"Mr. Brotch mentioned you would have detention. Please don't make any more trouble for yourself." He stood as well, put a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Remember what I said. Try to make your mother proud."

She frowned but he was already sitting to manually unlock his terminal, fingers swift over the keyboard. "I'll see you after dinner, sweetie."

Dismissed. Just like that. It stung and she scowled all the way to class. He'd caught her right before the start of school started and all the students were busy writing on their desks when she slipped in.

"Miss Cohen, a word."

She was still simmering when she approached Mr. Brotch. "I can get a note before you give me another detention."

"I'm assuming your father told you about it then?" Brotch smiled smugly. "Good. I could use the company."

She cleared her expression, eyes drawn to the stack of paper on his desk. "If I help you grade, will it get us out faster?"

"It won't be just you, I'm afraid. But we'll see." He handed her the assignment. "Which reminds me, you should get together with Mr. DeLoria about your upcoming labs."

"Sorry, what?" She must've misheard, stopped completely to return to his desk. "I'm usually with Amata for labs."

"Not this year, Miss Cohen. Now take a seat and get started. You have twenty minutes left."

Her eyes were drawn to Amata's from across the classroom as she found her seat. _Sorry,_ Amata mouthed when Mae looked her way.

This morning. It must've happened this morning while she was still with her dad. Otherwise, Amata would have warned her. She closed her eyes and rubbed a hand under her glasses. Detention for ditching class to avoid him, and she was still stuck with him. _Fuck._

She scribbled a short essay but couldn't remember what the writing prompt or her response had been. Somehow got through the other assignments while she stewed silently.

A note was dropped on her desk. Mae didn't look up at whoever dropped it when they passed her seat. Just crumbled it up in a fist. She counted to sixty before she smoothed it out.

 _Can't run, tin-man._

* * *

When lunchtime came around, she waited for the others to clear out before approaching Brotch's desk.

"I want to change my lab partner."

Brotch pre-empted her, already shaking his head. "Assignments were given out already and some of the pairs have already started planning what their projects are going to be. If you'd shown up yesterday, you would know this."

She faltered. "This happened yesterday?"

"Miss Cohen, we all get an hour lunch. I suggest you go on your break so I can enjoy mine."

She bit her tongue and stalked towards the cafeteria. She found Amata quickly.

"What happened yesterday?"

Amata sighed and put down her sandwich. "Mr. Brotch approached me about the project, told me that with all the class time Freddie has missed that he needed someone to keep him up to speed. Said it would be good for one of us to partner with him this year. So he gave me all his backed up assignments and I took them over to him last night." She looked a little too tightly strung, Mae realized suddenly. Stressed or worried. Or both. "We got through some of it."

Right. Of course. Freddie already had a small mountain of schoolwork to catch up on. All further thoughts were derailed at the grimace on Amata's face, however. "How is he?"

"His cold hasn't come back," she began doubtfully. She hesitated but leaned closer. "He doesn't look good, though."

"What do you mean?" Mae remembered the last time he'd been in class. Face pale and with a drag to his every movement, recovering from a cold was one way to put it. Hardly anyone got sick in the Vault anymore and when they did, they were usually kept in their own quarters, or if it got really bad, the clinic.

"I'm not sure how to explain it. He's more than tired. It's like, he..." Amata bit her lip. "You just have to see him."

"We should visit tonight then."

Amata shook her head. "I don't know if his mom will let us. I only got through because I brought all his school work, but it seemed like Mrs. Gomez didn't want me to visit."

"Why? He shouldn't be contagious anymore."

"I don't know."

The two girls stared at each other worriedly. They were both used to their dads being secretive individuals. But now Freddie was being added to that list of unanswerable questions.

No. Mae would not accept that.

She frowned as she went through the motions of her lunch routine.

"What I still don't understand is why Butch chose you as his lab partner," Amata finally wondered aloud. She looked at Mae curiously. "I thought maybe Paul would step in."

"Paul hasn't talked to me since last year," Mae muttered, pushing the pickled beets around her plate.

"Since the breakup?"

"He didn't really talk to me before we got together. Then he stopped altogether after he dumped me." Mae paused, chewing her sandwich thoughtfully. "Actually, talking wasn't our thing when we were together, either."

Amata giggled and Mae smiled despite herself.

"Well, at least it isn't one of the Macks you're stuck with."

Mae sobered at that. Finally giving up on lunch, she got up to grab a coffee. She felt eyes on her again but refused to meet Butch's stare as she added non-dairy creamer.

She couldn't run, but she could ignore him for as long as possible.

* * *

The blank margin of her worksheet had a rough sketch of a bobblehead with black frames like the ones she and Jonas wore. But not the smile. She left that area purposely blank. The toy had no expression without its mouth, no smile forced upon him permanently. The others murmured around her, waiting for free period to start. She heard Christine get up behind her to request the pass from Brotch. Tiny bladder couldn't sustain her for another ten minutes.

Mae's pencil continued to curve around each whorl of hair on the bobblehead. She didn't realize Butch was leaning over her until his words crawled across her neck.

"You can't draw for shit."

He was quick, sitting back before she straightened and headbutted him in the face. She turned to find him smirking in Christine's chair.

"Why?" she demanded, voice low. He had gotten tired of waiting for a reaction, was now pounding on her door for it.

He leaned closer, blue eyes laughing. At her, she'd bet. "Why what?"

"Why lab partners, you moron." She tried to keep her voice even, but it was getting difficult. "I wouldn't have said anything."

"Now I'll make sure you don't, poindexter. You don't want your grade suffering because of me, do ya?"

Her eyes narrowed. He chuckled as she pinned him with her stare, reached out to pinch her nose. She jerked away from his hand.

"It didn't even come to me, but this could be fun, tin-man." He leaned back, relaxed when she pictured punching him in the face the way she had when she was ten. "Don't think I've ever seen you this ticked off."

He stood swiftly when Christine returned, gave her one last lazy grin before he turned to his seat.

The worst part was he was right. She didn't want to draw her dad's attention again or have any more talks about upping her prescription. She was stuck.

The frustration boiled within her.


	5. Chapter 5

She slogged through the math homework, the answer key sitting somewhere beneath the stack of worksheets. A couple of seats behind her, Butch had buried himself in his Pip-boy since the beginning of detention, muttering under his breath every ten minutes or so. She was keeping count, the quiet enough that she was able to disappear into the equations and their orderly sense. Followed the pattern to its conclusion, the answers either making sense or failing in logic somewhere in the middle.

And then Butch would curse, bringing her back to detention with him and Brotch.

 _Five._ She crossed a line through the tally of four she had scratched on the note he'd dropped on her desk. His handwriting was surprisingly pleasing to look at. The letters were slanted and evenly spaced in a way that said either a lot of practice (which she wouldn't believe, even if she saw it) or a natural eye for aesthetics.

She paged through the sheets of math homework until she found his, compared the way his name was penciled near the top to his threatening note. A natural eye for aesthetics, it seemed. Huh.

She didn't notice Brotch had left the classroom until her desk was jerked and twisted around forcefully, the heavy scrape of metal on metal screeching in the empty classroom at the sudden turn. Her desk was pulled to her left in one final tug and she was gaping sideways at Butch before she understood what he had done. He had trapped her between her desk chair and the flat surface of his desktop.

His legs stretch over her lap, effectively locking her in place and her anger spiked as his smirk grew.

"Move," she growled. She tried to knock his legs off but it wasn't easy when he pushed down his weight with the desk blocking her movements. She resorted to pinching and twisting her legs around.

"Hold the fuck still, tin-man, I'll be quick," he said, a low growl as he clamped down harder. His hand reached out to cover hers where it was gripping the fabric of his vault suit, the touch warm and solid and the contact unexpected enough she went still. He looked alarmed, which was odd when she was expecting mocking or amused and always, always at her expense. "Just, none of that stuff that happened last time, you hear me?"

She remained wary but unable to focus on much but the heat of his hand on hers. It was like a brand, the gentleness so foreign. It warmed fingers that were always cold in the constantly circulating air of the vault, her pale hand a contrast to the warm bronze of his. He meant it to be calming, the thought hit with certainty.

Her stomach clenched and she pulled her hand free, crossing her arms. Put as much distance as she could between them in her limited space. Her eyes went as hard as the pebbles in the samples the vault used for geology and she glared at him. Waiting.

"It's easy. Just keep your lips sealed and it'll be smooth sailing to an A."

"Because I'll be doing all the work. I told you I wouldn't talk, but you didn't believe me." She sat up and when her legs pulled against his, they slid easily, his weight still in place but with less pressure. "You try to fuck with my grades or get me in trouble and I will not be responsible for my actions. You think I won't do anything, but I wouldn't bet on it."

His eyelashes were long and really dark, darker than his hair and she could count them if given enough time. She hadn't realized how close she'd gotten throwing her own threat at him until he leaned back in his chair, that stupid grin on his face again. It was unruffled but cutting. He believed her but was almost curious enough to test her, it said. Her hands clenched on the desktop.

"Alright, poindexter. We get each other." He nodded before sliding his legs off. He pushed and turned her desk around again, all in one quick movement. Almost like it had never happened but for her stomach being tied in knots.

Her face burned as she tried to finish the grading. It took her longer than she thought it would, Brotch dismissing Butch before she got through the stack.

* * *

Amata found her in the diner and Mae quickly squeezed her in front of her in line, despite the complaints of those behind her.

"I'm not going to be able to stay," Amata began as she chose the sweet potato and beans. Mae did as well, adding a pear to her tray.

"Are you going to Freddie's?"

At Amata's nod, she handed her the pear. "Not every day they have his favorite."

Amata smiled as they sat at their usual booth. "You should come with me."

Mae shook her head. "I have a shift and I don't want to have to explain to my dad why I'm late. Besides, maybe my dad will provide some insight on Freddie."

"You think he'll talk to you about it?"

"I'll see what I can find out," she promised, tucking in. She was done with being in the dark.

They finished eating and wished the other luck before Mae grabbed some dinner for her dad. She took the tray with her, knowing if he was left to his own devices, he would eat nearer to midnight when his stomach finally caught up with his brain.

She found a note on his office door.

 _"House call. Jonas is on standby if you have an emergency.'_

Maybe her luck was starting to turn.

* * *

It was two hours later that she questioned how true that thought had been. She shut the drawer she had just gone through again and stared at the terminal once more as her mind drifted. It was locked, the password something so difficult she had to keep logging off after each try. If she tried too many times, she could lock the terminal and he'd find out she was trying to hack into it.

"Working late, doc?"

Her entire body became taught at the mocking tone, eyes flying to where Stevie blocked the doorway.

"Jonas is on his way." The lie came easy. "Come back in five minutes."

"But I'm here to see you, M." He leaned on the doorjamb, crossed his arms over the riot gear on his chest. His eyes were steady and trained on her, smile stiff as plastic.

She was numb, she reminded herself. Cold anger, unshakeable.

"That's sweet. I'd call you S, but can you imagine the questions if I did that? Did I mean S for shitstain? S for scrotum, S for shitbird?"

Stevie's face pinched, brows furrowing. "You should watch that mouth of yours, little girl. Before I knock a tooth out."

A molten ball was slowly burning a hole in her stomach. The baseball diamond came back, the last game of the season filling her with a recklessness she usually lacked when she was around him. "Let's see you try. Hit me and we'll see where that lands you, asshole."

She was poised on the edge of her seat under the desk, weight on her heels. A tray was to her left, on the short cabinet and a scalpel within grabbing distance.

"Stevie, fuck man. How low on the department totem pole are you that you gotta pick on Cohen to get off?"

Butch surprised them both, pushing past Stevie into her dad's office. Stevie's face went from ugly to murderous as he locked on Butch who stopped between them. Not directly in Stevie's line of sight, but close enough to be distracting as hell.

Mae stood from her perch as the mood in the office shifted from tense to chaotic. She was tight as a spring, unsure which way to brace herself from. Butch seemed calm in the face of Stevie's obvious hostility, shoulders back but stance loose and ready. He didn't even look at her, his hands in his jacket pockets. One of them was clenched in there, she knew. She knew it was tight around Toothpick. Her dad and she had swiped the switchblade enough times for parts to keep her BB gun going. If he pulled it out, she had enough time to grab the scalpel and then… what?

"What are you all doing in my office?"

Stevie's entire demeanor changed when another adult appeared, but her dad still frowned at all of them like children, looking exhausted and suspicious at the same time. His eyes went to her in the middle. "I trust everything is okay?"

She nodded as Stevie muttered something before he left.

Butch shrugged easily, hands in his pockets. "Yeah, doc, sure. Everything's peachy."

He strolled out with no further word to either of them. No explanation, no reason to have been in the clinic.

"What was that about?" her father wondered, echoing her thoughts. His eyes landed on the dinner tray and some of his exhaustion receded from his face. "Thank you, honey, I almost forgot."

"Yeah, goodnight dad."

She took her bag and fled, feeling too scattered to properly question him about Freddie without seeming too obvious. She didn't want to risk locking him up like his terminal.

* * *

She wished for smaller targets. Or more space. Or better yet, a _moving_ target. Anything to cut the monotony.

Lining up the toy soldiers again, she aimed at the limbs, taking the arms and heads off until they were nothing but small little lumps on leg stands. Even that was not enough to melt the energy she still felt in her limbs, the residual adrenaline. The entire day had been trying.

She checked the time. A trip through the electric hum of the reactor might help. Stanley was usually in bed by two-thirty so she should be safe. She left her BB gun propped inside one of the lockers, unlocked the door to the sub-basement and pulled it closed behind her softly, leaving her shooting range behind. Snuck across the hall into the reactor room after unlocking the door. The mechanism was simple enough to get through, Stanley always too trusting.

She sat close to the reactor's core for a few minutes. Maybe fifteen, she wasn't sure, losing count somewhere after eight. But the hum helped and when she crawled back to her feet, she did so with a tiredness in her. She was ready to try and sleep.

The door to the sub-basement stood a little ajar and she returned to lock up properly. She shut the door behind her, ready to begin bagging her targets before she came to a stop full tilt.

In her shooting range, lining up her toy soldiers, her BB gun held awkwardly in his hands, was Butch DeLoria.

"You want to keep grades outta this, fine, no problem." He turned to her, eyes bright with his find. Her body went cold. "But you're gonna have to learn to share if you don't want me to blab about _this."_

Her control snapped at the sight, all of her energy finding an outlet. Walking purposely, she lunged at him as soon as she was close enough, knocking them both down to land hard on the ground. Mae was beyond her body's protest or his pained grunt and she swung as soon as they were on the floor. He managed to catch her wrist after two successful hits and before the third one landed while his other knocked her glasses off with a swipe that grazed her temple. Her vision dimmed and blurred for a few sick seconds before it adjusted. Blurry still but not hazy.

They twisted against each other and she ended above him, swinging at his face with her free hand before he bucked beneath her and knocked her over sideways, trapping her leg beneath his waist as they changed position.

Her vision swam after the landing, her head where he'd connected with her temple smacking against the ground. Her limbs loosened in his grip and he forced a hand under her head, fingers searching and tightening on the hair there enough to pull but not hurt. The tug helped her blink past the darkness.

"Christ, tin-man, you're a fucking nutcase." He was breathless, like her, and she focused on that as she fought nausea, as her body tried to acclimate to that and the prickling she felt deep in her core. Her body was burning where it met with, the way his hand had branded her earlier.

He let her go, straightened up to stand when he realized she wouldn't attack anymore. She lay there, fighting to recover her calm as her mind raced with all she was feeling.

"Don't call me that," she managed, voice weak.

He seemed as surprised as she was that she was talking, eyebrows raised. "What? Nutcase?" She had never complained about tin-man.

She nodded, ignored the look he gave her as she stood up as well, her body and especially her head and knuckles aching.

"You're a fucking weirdo, Cohen." He shook his head, backed away. He looked wary but still grabbed the BB gun from the floor. Held it tightly in his hands, position a little defensive. "Now, do we have a deal?"

She breathed steadily, her body still humming. But the energy was different, it wasn't one she wanted to push out of her. It was caressing her skin, a feeling she found herself craving.

Mae nodded stiffly, "Just lock up behind you."

She turned and left him in her only private place in the Vault. A heavy price to pay for what she was feeling around him.

She didn't want to think of how easily he could destroy her with this.


	6. Chapter 6

It was bad. Bad bad bad _bad_ and it'd only get so much worse if Butch opened his mouth. _When_ Butch opened his mouth.

Mae had a small meltdown once she was alone in her empty living room, hair wild as she fisted her hands in the dark locks and rocked back and forth. The thought of the shitstorm she'd get stuck in loomed over her like a guillotine, the blade shaking and ready to come down on the soft flesh of her neck. Her skin felt tight, like it didn't fit anymore. Like her body was trying to jump out and make a run for it. She couldn't even come up with specifics in her anxiety-ridden mind, but she knew her life would become a living hell if she were found out.

 _A doctor needs both working hands. You won't lose your pitching arm. They can't keep anyone locked up for long,_ she repeated to herself, over and over as she paced. She wasn't sure if corporal punishment was a thing or how the Overseer would punish her for an illegal firearm. But he wasn't unbiased when it came to her or the good doctor.

Mae paced, losing track of time, unable to stay still. She would be the one bearing the brunt of it, not her dad. She'd make sure of it if the truth ever came out. Take full responsibility. It was still the best gift she'd ever gotten on one of the better birthdays she could remember. Split lip and all.

She crouched, pressing her face into her knees. She was sweating, her hairline damp with it. Her shoulders were tense and bunched around her neck and she hadn't taken off her school bag, she realized. The straps were cutting into her, but she closed her eyes in the darkness her folded body provided. Breathed in the smell of the familiar laundry detergent.

It was three minutes shy of five a.m. when she finally made it back down to the reactor level. The door to the sub-basement was locked and she frowned at it.

He'd done the one thing she asked.

She found it oddly annoying as she picked the lock open.

The toy soldiers he'd been lining up were missing. She found them in their canvas bag in the locker, her BB gun propped up as if she'd left it there herself. Everything was in its place. Uneasy still, she checked the gun thoroughly, breaking it down to its basic components. It was all there. Every single part. She slipped the dismantled gun into her now empty school bag. Each piece would have to be hidden in a different place, until it was safe enough to bring out again. Maybe not until Amata became Overseer someday.

Looking into the locker with bitter nostalgia, her attention was drawn to the bottom where she kept the metal bullseye targets her dad had first set up for her. Dinged and pocked beyond repair, she hadn't used them in years, sticking to smaller targets as her aim got better. She bagged them, too. All the evidence needed to disappear.

She reached the bottom and her mouth went dry as she stared at the empty box.

Her picture. The one from her 10th birthday, split lip still bloody as she grinned at the camera with her dad beside her and BB gun in hand. It had been buried at the bottom of the box of shooting targets. Someone would've had to really dig in her junk to find it.

Butch had plucked the only piece of evidence he would need against her. Ever.

She was now well and truly fucked.

* * *

When Mae saw Freddie in the hallway as she hurried to class, the dark cloud that had been thundering over her head lifted momentarily. He looked pale. And tired. But he was smiling that easygoing smile of his when he saw her, even if it was dimmer than what she was used to.

"Fred," she greeted quietly, coming to a stop before him. She was brimming with affection, keeping most of it under wraps. Only a small smile escaped at the sight of him. "Why aren't you inside? We're going to be late."

"Just… needed some air, you know?"

"Move spaz," Wally barked, crashing into her from behind and knocking her into Freddie as he passed. He laughed and disappeared into the classroom and she caught Butch's malicious grin and Paul's averted eyes before they trailed him into class.

Mae straightened, muttering under her breath but Freddie's hands on her arms squeezed, forcing her attention to him.

"Fred, you okay?"

He was trembling, his head bent to the floor while his vise-like grip on her arms tightened. It was hard to make Freddie angry, but she'd seen it a couple of times. She didn't remember it this way, though.

Taking a gulp and letting it out shakily, he nodded finally. When he straightened and nudged her toward the class, she frowned at the faint sheen of sweat on his forehead, at how he avoided her eyes when he noticed her looking.

"You two are late, and you will get lunch detention if you are not in your seats by the time this film begins."

Mae hurried to her seat and used the first half hour of the film splitting her attention between Freddie and the first draft of a project idea. When the first note landed on her desk halfway through the crop rotation portion of the holotape, Mae unfolded it when Brotch's attention was riveted on something in his terminal.

 _7pm. Time to share._

She rolled her eyes. Scribbled, _I have a job, dick._ Dropping the note on the floor, she kicked it back, not bothering to check whether it made it to him or not.

Mae wanted to talk to Freddie before she jumped to any conclusions about what he was going through. So she listed options for her project in her notes, mentally picturing the space needed for the setup. She could take the couch for a few weeks if necessary, keep the equipment in her room.

A note hit her temple and landed on the floor and she stepped over it before Brotch saw it, her boot hiding it from view. Butch's aim was terrible and she was at the end of her rope when it came to him. She left it there, continued with her notes.

A few minutes later, something smacked the back of her head.

She turned in her seat, eyes flashing dangerously.

"Don't look at me like that," Christine whispered, frowning at Mae. She flicked the note to the floor, on the opposite side of the one she had stepped on. "Keep me out of your love spats."

Mae turned back to her notebook to a clean page and began writing.

 _You needy_ _child. These are your options._ _Pick a time and stick_ _to_ _it!_

 _6-7AM_

 _4-5PM_

 _11PM-12AM_

The pencil tore into the sheet of paper when she underlined, she was pressing down so hard. She balled the note before turning in her seat again, looked past Christine's annoyed look to lob it at his face with a flick of her wrist. In the dark, Butch couldn't see and turned his face up when he noticed it. The balled up note bounced off his left eye and she returned to her notebook as he cursed behind her. It was petty, but she felt better.

The lights came back on as the film ended and Brotch leaned against his desk.

"We've been touching on these subjects during the last couple of weeks for a reason. The purpose of your lab project this term is to get familiar with both your S.P.E.C.I.A.L strengths and weaknesses in a practical setting. Your project consists of putting together a construct; a model, a protocol, a schedule, an activity, or even a recipe that you agree as a team would be helpful to the vault as a whole. To give you an idea, one of these projects resulted in the hot chocolate substitute we currently use."

"You gave an F for that one, right?"

Some of the students giggled at Freddie's question and Mae smiled inwardly, a little relieved. But Freddie was right. The concoction was grainy on the tongue after each sip, it was gross. Mae remembered the hot chocolate mix before their supply rotted out. Now they only got a serving of the real stuff during winter solstice and the Overseer's birthday, two days that meant nothing to them normally.

"I expect one submission from each group, one idea. So you will have to combine your skills. The goal is for you to get an in-depth look at working those tagged skills to help our community thrive. Teamwork is part of that process."

It sounded simple enough. The idea germinating was something she hadn't worked on before, but she felt confident. The closest she had come was the growth a rosemary plant. It had been stunted and pale and the only successful specimen after five other failures. But it was sturdy as hell once it took to the soil. It still grew in the main greenhouse, in a corner where a couple of fans were turned on to keep the mildew away (the cause of the third failure). But taking a stab at growing a crop of onions, that was a bigger project that required more attention. They were hardy, once figured out, plentiful after they got going. And Old Lady Palmer remembered them fondly when she spoke of them. The chip with the data program on their growth had been corrupted during a power outage decades ago and the backups lost when one of the Mr. Handys malfunctioned and turned its flamethrower on a section of the vault. A freak accident that had forced them all to be creative with what they had left.

She looked to Freddie again, watched Amata murmur to him before a note hit her shoulder and landed on her lap.

She sighed and unfolded it where it landed. Frowned and brought the note up closer to confirm she wasn't mistaken when she read it. Butch had circled every option she provided then looped a bigger circle around all of them. He was trying to claim every free hour of her day.

She was tempted to stuff the note down his throat when she met with him at four for their first meeting on sharing.

* * *

"Fred?"

Mae worked with him during their free period, giving Amata a break to catch up on her own work. Freddie took notes beside her, but he didn't ask many questions and Mae ended her quiet summary of the equations in her notebook to find him staring at them blankly, chin on his palm and mind a million miles away.

She hesitated before reaching out to touch the skin of his wrist with her fingers, rubbing it gently when he didn't immediately notice.

"Hmm sorry, Mae." He rubbed tired eyes. "Head feels a little scrambled right now. Can't seem to focus."

Her eyes softened, "Let's find one of those chairs in the back," she urged and Amata agreed, packing her items to follow Mae through the stacks.

A deep chair was in the back, the largest reading chair in the library. It usually remained empty because it sat by itself and the crop of students from their class didn't meet here during free period to work on their own. Many sat in their pairs and Mae was silently thankful that Butch remained with his usual goons, away from her.

Amata sank into the chair with a book and highlighter while Mae settled on the floor with her back against Amata's legs. Freddie lay his head on Mae's lap, his lanky frame stretched out along the line of the shelf. A nap would do Freddie wonders.

They remained like that, all three more comfortable together than Mae remembered ever being on her own. Or with anyone else. Freddie slept a little while the girls read, Mae going over a chapter on alliums. But not even halfway through the hour she found him lying awake, still on his side and staring at the navel of her jumpsuit for minutes on end. She didn't bring attention to it, to him being awake because he remained so still. Enough so he didn't want to be noticed. If he was comfortable, she wasn't going to ask questions.

The alarm on her Pip-boy went off and Mae had to nudge Freddie up, hating that she had to break the small cocoon they had built.

"Gotta meet my dad before my shift," she said to their questioning looks.

She _did_ plan to meet with him. She still needed to ask about Freddie. Just, not right then.

First, she had a thieving asshole to deal with.

* * *

"You thieving asshole." So, maybe she wasn't the most creative. But her words were still accurate.

"You kiss Amata with that mouth?" She waited silently, his jab too childish to respond to. His smile didn't drop as he leaned his back on the locked door of the sub-basement, taking a drag of his cigarette. He blew out the smoke close enough to her that she scowled. "So, we gonna stare at each other all night, or are you gonna let me in before security smells this?"

Fuck him. "Rule number one: no smoking."

She knocked the cigarette out of his hand and he cursed, bending to pick it up before she stomped on it.

"You're such a bitch." He was annoyed, brow twitching. But he put his cigarette out and tucked it back in its pack, pocketing them. "If we're doing this, I got rules of my own."

"This'll be enlightening." She took a knee and concentrated on working the lock open.

"Rule two is you don't destroy my smokes."

"Don't bring them out then."

"Rule three," he spoke above her as she pushed him through the open door. "You gotta teach me to jimmy the lock open."

"Not a chance. Rule number three is you're only allowed here under my supervision."

"Rule three is you bring me here whenever I ask."

Her eyes narrowed. "You're not going to monopolize my time, DeLoria. I have homework, the clinic, and our project to work on as it is, not to mention my friends-"

"Who? The square and the Overseer's daughter?" He chuckled, heading straight for the locker. "I'm sure you three get into some _wild_ shit," he mocked, rolling his eyes. He paused as he glanced inside, took a moment to search.

He turned to her, the anger clear. "You're welching already, Cohen?"

She adopted his pose, crossed her arms as she leaned back against the opposite wall. "Give me my picture back."

He looked dangerous as he got closer, deliberately taking his time towards her. "Nah. I kinda like it. Almost forgot about that bloody lip I gave you."

She wanted to lunge at him, to add to the faint damage she had given his face yesterday. She was so tempted to test it again, to see if that same heat would happen if she touched him. If it would scorch her.

Realizing how badly she wanted to, she straightened and stalked past him to the locker. She took the bag out and dumped it at his feet, the components rattling.

"Assemble it back together. I'll see you after work."

She left before he could ask more questions.

* * *

Arriving at the clinic, she found the main area empty. The door to her dad's office was ajar and from inside she could hear her dad and Jonas. Arguing. They kept it low but she recognized that urgency, that timbre in both of them. She couldn't help but stare as she saw their silhouettes through the blinds of his office, James leaning forward. Pleading. He had that pinched look on his face, the one that he wore when he had to ask her to behave, to make her mother proud.

"All I am asking is for more _time._ Please understand, Jonas. "

Jonas didn't seem like he was, though. He was standing stiffly, with a detached look she hadn't seen on his face before. He was drifting, unmoored. The desk between her dad and his assistant like an island between them. Unassailable.

Mae had to walk on eggshells during her whole shift, her dad distant and distracted while Jonas remained dejected, even as he tried to hide it from her.

She headed home after her shift, feet dragging. What was happening to her life? It hadn't always been calm, but she felt like everything was slowly coming undone at the seams now. She wanted to head to her shooting range to lay off some steam, to relax in something familiar but... Hesitating, she took the stairs down to the reactor level. Unlocked the door while the hum of the reactor called to her. She'd have to remind Butch to be careful about Stanley puttering around down there.

Her space was empty. She went to the locker again and found a note stuck in the hinges of the metal enclosure.

 _Bright and early, tin-man._

She groaned, thumping her head against the hollow metal. Out of curiosity, she looked inside. Mae wasn't sure if she should be surprised or annoyed that Butch had managed to put her BB gun back in working order.

There was one thing for sure, though. Butch was still a jerk. She could always count on that, at least.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: I forgot to address this earlier, but to the person that reviewed their displeasure at the title for this work: my original intention was to title this 'The Kids Aren't Alright' after the Fall Out Boy song of the same name, but someone at AO3 already had that title in use, so I used one of the song lyrics for this fic. It might not be the best title, but the lyric fits the love that Mae has experienced thus far from the most important man in her life (her dad), so it stayed.**

 **The original review read:**

:A love story that is named after a blood disorder? What has this fandom come to...

 **The same person has reviewed again (I'm assuming it's the same person), with a more strongly worded comment so here is your response.**

 **Hope that helps...?**

* * *

The first day went about as badly as Mae feared it would.

She had promised herself. _Promised herself_ that she wouldn't let it degenerate into a fist fight. Not again. Not when their most recent exchanges had gotten so volatile so quickly. And Mae had a plan in mind. A simple return to how she'd dealt with him before they had gotten to this point. She had to be cold, indifferent again. She was reacting and once she went back to ignoring him, he'd get bored.

And if he continued missing as badly as he currently was at the targets, maybe this thing between them would only stretch on for a couple of weeks. A month, at the most.

But try as she might-

"It's not a _toy,_ DeLoria."

"Looks like one."

She slammed her book shut. "You're gonna break it."

"You sure it ain't broken already?" He shook the delicate frame, the BBs clinking inside the way the marbles probably did in his giant head. She felt it in her clenched teeth. "This thing rattles more than Old Lady Palmer."

It was like she was ten again. No self-control. Spitting on her sweet roll before handing it to him when he tried to bully it out of her on her birthday.

She wished she could say she was disappointed in herself as they crashed in a tangled heap on the floor and tussled for the BB gun within that first hour. Butch had the wonderful talent of bringing out the worst in her. And she was letting him. But she preferred this to the other reaction she'd gone through when he'd gotten this close. Fighting back (fighting at all) was infinitely better than a breathless panic.

He held her BB gun out of reach and she cursed his long arms, his taller body, even as her skin craved him. She was still working at ignoring that particular urge. Wanting to touch Butch had to be about the worst and most confusing part so far. But she refused to give in. He was showing a complete disregard for its importance, and if Butch thought he could break her gun without her interference, he was sorely mistaken.

"Just because you're a lousy shot-" she pushed against the forearm he had across her collarbones, using all the weight behind her five-foot-two frame when he wouldn't budge. "-doesn't mean it's broken."

He grinned beneath her, blue eyes bright and she growled at the maddening smile, planting one of her feet on the floor to get more leverage and grabbing a fistful of his suit. He shifted and she tumbled over him to crash face first into the hard floor with a sickening crunch.

She groaned as Butch scrambled to his feet, BB gun forgotten once again.

"Shit... was that your nose?"

"No." But it came out muffled and he watched warily as she sat upright, leaning back against one of the metal crates. There wasn't any blood and they both sighed silently. If she ended hurt badly enough that she had to go to the clinic, this time bomb between them would end its ticking and catch them both within its radius. As it was, with the state of her glasses... "Fuck."

They had snapped near the hinge and one of the lenses had cracked into a small web of lines. She pulled them off, eyes darting to him with a murderous look.

"Scrapping really ain't your thing, twerp," Butch snickered. He crouched in front of her, hands hanging loosely between his knees and his smug look made her fingers twitch with the urge to wipe it off. She took a chance, a quick punch that he anticipated, catching her wrist deftly. "Can't keep your hands off me? I don't blame you for wanting the Butch-man."

He smirked and she jabbed with her other hand, catching him on the mouth. Her knuckles struck bone and she hissed in pain, his head rocking a little from the blow. She watched, holding her breath as his tongue ran over his lip, the pink tip touching where his tooth had split his lip. She clenched her fist again as his eyes met hers, gaze dark and heavy.

And then he straightened abruptly.

"Alright, girly. We're even."

She gaped up at him, his face getting fuzzier without her glasses now that he was standing. "What?"

"We're square now. For your glasses, genius." He went to the locker where he hung his Tunnel Snakes jacket, slipping into it and popping his collar.

Mae remained where she was for a good two minutes after Butch walked out of the sub-basement, closing the door behind him.

That was... certainly not what she expected.

* * *

She taped up her frames until she could take them to Jonas. Her dad was handling the morning shift and she wasn't about to risk being late for class again with the questions or lecture he would impart. Detention was avoided and she spent her free period and the afternoon with Amata and Freddie.

Freddie seemed to be in better spirits than the day before, teasing her on her broken frames after she told them she'd a run in with her door right after waking up.

"You didn't see it coming with these puppies?" He tried her broken glasses on, his quip that her prescription was so bad he could see into the future with her glasses never getting old. "Damn, we're doomed. The G.O.A.T. is going reveal your career as the vault head cook this year and your cooking is worse than my mom's."

He let his head fall to the table, her glasses cracking more underneath him.

Mae snorted a laugh, looking away. The bags under his eyes were still there, his face looking peaky.

"You're making them worse," Amata giggled, reaching for his head to lift him up. Freddie was grinning and Mae found she couldn't really keep her eyes away as he took the glasses off and handed them back to her.

His grin softened to a smile as he leaned in and slipped them on for her. "Forgot how pretty your eyes are, Maula."

Mae felt her ears burning, the blush spreading across her cheeks even as a small part of her sunk in despair at the name. Would it be so much harder for him to say that to Mae?

A shadow fell over their usual table and they all looked up. Mae blanched. Stevie was standing behind Amata, observing their small group with his plastic smile.

"Freddie, your mother needs to see you."

"Right now?" Freddie frowned at his dad. Mae had been so caught up with Stevie that she hadn't even noticed he was accompanied by Officer Gomez. "I thought we were meeting at the Diner before the movie?"

Herman Gomez looked tired but not the way Freddie did. He looked stressed. This illness was taking it out on all of them. "She'd like to see you now. We should go, son."

Freddie sighed, collecting their campaign notebook and the graph paper map before nodding at them both. "See you at the movies."

He left with his dad but Stevie lingered, his eyes on Mae even as he spoke to Amata. "The Overseer would like to see you, Amata."

Amata frowned at the summons as well. But noticing how tense her friend had become, she picked up her own things and stood. "Let's not keep him waiting then."

Stevie rested a hand on the table, leaning closer to Mae. Even through her cracked lenses, his dull brown eyes were small and mean. His skin had a rough texture to it, jaw in need of a shave. His breath warmed her face and she told herself not to cringe as he reached an arm behind her, leaning closer still. "Someone finally knock some sense into you, M?"

"Get away from her," Amata warned. She was all Overseer when she used that authoritative tone.

"Tell your little friend Butch that I've got my eye on both of you," he murmured before he leaned back, brandishing the toothpick he had grabbed from the table towards Amata as she glared at him. He grinned at Mae before sticking it between his teeth and walking Amata away.

Mae released a breath she wasn't aware she was holding, chest thundering loud enough she was sure everyone else in the library could hear. Her ribs were caving in suddenly and she dragged her school bag along as she ran for the cover of the supply closet. The fear of what was about to hit her choked her and she tried to flee from it, from what the panic attack would do to her.

But she wasn't able to outrun it. She was only able to find shelter. Only able to force herself to endure. Until she arrived at the other side, turned inside out and raw.

* * *

 _Scrapping ain't your thing, twerp._

Mae blinked, startled out of her stupor. She stood from her crouch rather suddenly, heart rate still not back to its normal rhythm. It was still too fast. But she was able to breathe normally and it was almost as if she was synchronized with her Pip-boy, her alarm going off not more than a minute after she woke up.

She turned it off before frowning at the time. It was the snooze alarm. It had gone off more than an hour ago. Closer to two hours. When it hadn't been turned off, it must have gone off again. For the past hour and a half at the very least, every few minutes or so.

Mae cursed, shutting her eyes. She had missed her appointment at the range, dinner. Stevie getting that close to her had completely messed her up.

She rushed to the clinic, not ready to create more waves in her wading pool. All the while, she hoped Butch wouldn't feed her to the wolves.

But she couldn't stop thinking about him, about what he'd said to her earlier that day. Fighting wasn't her way, not really. It was only something she did with him and it was only because it was their way, something they'd done as kids. Before everything changed. Before her medication, before her first really bad breakdown.

Since it was movie night, Jonas let her leave the clinic early, ruffling a hand through her hair. "Quitting time for you, sport. Go, enjoy being young and beautiful."

 _Young and helpless,_ Mae thought darkly. But she nodded and on impulse, leaned over and hugged him, arms crushing him tight for all of six seconds before she let go. "I love you, Jonas."

Jonas looked surprised but gave her a small smile, tweaking her nose under her new glasses. "Be careful with this new pair, Mae. Once you're old enough, we'll see about that corrective surgery."

Mae smiled at him as well, grateful for him in ways she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to express. Not fully.

Walking on light feet out of habit, she headed to the atrium. The movie had already started and she could see no empty seats nearby so she remained standing, leaning against the wall. She felt too wired to sit through the familiar plotline anyway, her attention instead on the audience members as they all settled into their sweetheart's shoulders or slouched alone. At the front sat the Overseer and Amata, the Macks right next to them taking up the rest of the row. Even Stevie was there, Mae noted with trepidation. But he remained where he sat, not moving or turning to look at her and she didn't move either.

She noticed her father in one of the seats, his attention in his Pip-boy. Always lost elsewhere, he used to tell her after she had to repeat his name several times when she was younger to get his attention.

She saw Ellen, her dirty blond hair looking white in the darkness of the atrium, in the brightness of the projector. From a distance, Mae could see the classic beauty that was Ellen DeLoria when she looked healthier. The projector smoothed the tired lines from her face, softened her sharp features into high, rounded cheekbones, a straight and graceful nose. She normally slouched, defeated before she even started fighting. Up until you crossed her, then she was a bitter old horse that kicked at anyone who came near her. But in her seat she seemed relaxed, arms folded loosely and one leg crossed. She was wearing lipstick, and a crooked smile curved her colored mouth.

Mae pursed her lips at the sight, trying to follow who the gaze must be focused on with Ellen's head tilted the way it was. But her roaming eyes were pulled to a stop. They landed on Butch, on the curl of his greased up hair, his long arm resting on the back of his mother's chair.

As if sensing her, he turned his head slowly, moving his neck only. She caught the corner of his eye, the blue iris narrowing as he spotted her.

She left the atrium when she saw him stand. She didn't hesitate, booking it to the reactor room. He would follow. She was sure.

She had unlocked it and was pacing when he finally closed the door behind him, leaning his back against it.

"What'd you think, Cohen?" he muttered, hands in his pockets, dark brows drawn tight. She'd seen him like this, angry, dangerous. In the restroom with Ellen. He kept himself tense, didn't get closer, and she was grateful for the distance because she remembered how she had stuttered back then. "Just cuz I took it easy on you earlier, you think I won't turn you and your pops in?"

"Oh, I think about that constantly." She didn't stutter this time, focusing on his cut lip. She could fight back, she was capable. She just needed to get better at it, she didn't have enough confidence.

Butch crossed his arms, looked at the floor. "What happened to you?"

"Doesn't matter. I've got a proposition for you."

One of his brows lifted, but his face remained tight, anger still simmering. "Hate to break it to you, tin-man, but you already suck at keeping this one deal going."

She licked dry lips, stopped pacing. "I'll teach you to shoot if you fight me. If you teach me-"

"No."

She stared, surprised at how quickly he refused. "Why not?"

"It's a dumbass idea." He rolled his eyes, huffed out a loud breath of irritation as she continued staring. "I don't want the doc busting an artery when he finds out I was knocking his brat around."

Mae stilled at the bitter taste in her mouth. "We're not bringing my dad into this."

"You'll get hurt and you'll have to, tin-man. Trust me."

"Since when has that stopped you?" she demanded.

He glared at her, blue eyes sharper than usual before turning away. "Why are you pushing this?"

She walked up to him, seething that she had laid this wild idea at his feet, had finally gotten the courage to ask for his help and he had to be a pompous prick and refuse. She finally gave in, cold fingers ghosting over his lip, her ring finger, the one with the least strength brushing the lip below his cut.

"Because I'm tired of being defenseless." His mouth was soft and warm and the heat of his breath hit her directly in her center. She would have to explore that later, she told herself, even as the urge to get closer gnawed at her. "Besides, I won this morning."

He caught her wrist and squeezed it, the warning quick and sharp. "You don't want round two, tin-man."

She pulled her hand free, forced to back up as he turned to the door.

"I better see you here on Monday." He hunched his shoulders, glaring at the floor. "No more bullshit, no more second chances."

She stared after him, confused. His stance, the way he avoided her eyes… he said one thing but his body was saying something else. The same thing that she was suffering through.

Mae rubbed her eyes, finally feeling her body slumping, unable to be on edge anymore. She went straight home after locking up. Took her medication out of her pocket and added the pill she was supposed to take that day to the container Jonas had forgotten to collect from her during their last session. She couldn't keep flushing them down the toilet anymore. Not when it seemed she might need them more than she wanted to.

She dreamt that night. Of her fingers and then her mouth gently roaming over a split lip. Of sucking on it, until he hissed beneath her.


	8. Chapter 8

Amata frowned at the report on her father's desk, stirring her coffee absently. The soft clink of the spoon against the ceramic was rhythmic in the background as she attempted to prioritize the requisition list sitting before her. But the figures were blurring together on the sheet of paper as her mind worked on figuring out the best way to tell her father that he could take this new plan of his and shove i-

"Think you added enough sugar, 'Mata?"

She jumped at the voice and some of the coffee sloshed out of the mug and onto her hand.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Amata. Are you okay?" Herman Gomez dropped the box he'd been carrying and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to press onto her hand, trying to mop up the spill at the same time.

"I'm fine, Officer Gomez, the coffee was cold already," Amata said with a light laugh. She took his handkerchief and pressed it onto the reports, trying to salvage them. "Seems I needed a fresh cup anyway."

"Do you want me to get one for you?"

Amata smiled at Freddie's dad, at his kindness. Out of all the officers working under her father, he was the one she was closest to. Chief Hannon had been with the department longer, but there was a distance with him, a professionalism that left little room for warmth. Officer Gomez was like family, a doting figure that brought her donuts on her birthday. Usually only Mae and Freddie got Amata gifts.

"No. I'll go get it." She glanced at the clock. "I should see what Mrs. Taylor is serving for breakfast anyway. Did you eat already?"

"At seven-hundred sharp. Oats and powdered milk," he affirmed, taking his handkerchief back. "They have a few pears left, too, just ask for one. Agnes has them behind the counter, trying to hide them from Pepper."

Amata's smile deepened, knowing how strict Mrs. Gomez had always been with their food stores. "Do you mind leaving the recreational inventory on top? I have to go over it."

"No problem, future Overseer."

He said it with the affection of someone who'd seen her grow up, who'd watched over her since she'd been a baby.

But Amata felt the heavy weight of responsibility that followed the title as she walked out of her father's office. Future Overseer. She needed to remember to keep that in mind. Always.

* * *

While Amata spent her weekends learning about the continued well-being of the Vault, Mae's shifts at the clinic were almost lazy in comparison.

She had the morning shift by herself and she opened the clinic at six on the dot, determined to direct some of her pent up energy. Pushing carts and gurneys out of the way, she removed the non-slip mats from the floor and set them aside. With vault suit rolled up to the knee and hair subdued in a pair of french braids, she spent the first part of Saturday morning scrubbing the floors diligently, the lemon scent in the soapy water overpowering the antiseptic for that first hour and lulling her senses.

It was her calmest part of the week, sipping her morning coffee and waiting for the floor and her vault suit to dry from the scrub. The quiet was different in the clinic, a welcome presence instead of a bad reminder. Her dad didn't schedule any appointments until the late morning and she had always found a level of comfort in the clinic she didn't at home on her own.

 _Not so different from James, are we?_

She nearly sighed, laying back on the gurney to stare at nothing. She wanted to not think and just enjoy the peace, the stillness. But her thoughts invariably wandered to what she'd dreamt.

It had only been a dream. She knew this. Just like she could rationalize that she didn't get to choose the subject matter. She'd tried it for years, tried to change the channel on the nightmares that plagued her. All with no success.

And with everything that had happened in the past week, she could see how a dream about Butch slipped in there amongst all her other stressors.

But it didn't explain why it had taken the direction it had. Why she had crawled over him, why she had focused all her attention on his lips, why she had put her hands and then her mouth on him the way she had? Or why she'd woken up with the want still in her. A yearning that had been impossible to ignore. To be in control, the one to initiate. To be the one to get a reaction from him for once.

She shut her eyes. She must be really starved for attention if Butch's sudden invasion of her free time had her like this. Butch had become a leech on her time, an annoyance that had gotten her in trouble with Brotch and her dad. But he hadn't turned her in yet. And that was something. He'd done nothing that would completely sink her. He was just everywhere she was now. Mae would bet that if she turned quickly enough, she would find him hovering. Somewhere. It was the only explanation to why he showed up at the clinic after Stevie cornered her. Why he found her sneaking into the sub-basement and discovered her shooting range. Mae had a stalker and his name was Butch DeLoria. She nearly laughed at the absurdity.

It was either that or cry. And Mae didn't make a habit of crying in public.

She rubbed her face, tried to put Butch out of her mind. She had other things to deal with, anyway.

Pressing play on her Pip-boy, she let the holotape with recordings from Amata's private vinyl collection play in the background. With the floor dry, she placed the mats down again and worked on disinfecting the rest of the clinic. It was tedious work, something she'd learned to do with her dad since she'd been six. By the time eleven-hundred came around, either James or Jonas would show up for their first appointments and she'd spend the last hour of her shift with her schoolwork, sitting near the back of the clinic where she wouldn't get in the way.

She swayed to the music as she worked, feet quick and sure, hips quick with the changes. Amata had learned how to lindy hop when she was eleven. Had picked up every single move that she could find, in films, in old magazines, bopping in front of Grandma Palmer and refining the things she didn't learn from watching. And always with Mae as her dance partner. Mae had kept up with all of them, Amata's love infecting her too. But she was nowhere near as good as Amata, as passionate. Amata was a natural, graceful in nearly all of her first tries. But Mae could still do the complicated steps with her. With the music playing, her body took over and she was almost done with the main floor of the clinic, holding the last of the clean linens in the middle of tricky footwork when she noticed movement by the door.

"I haven't heard this number since forty five..."

Mae recognized the voice as she snapped the sheet flat on a gurney and came forward. "Mrs. DeLoria?

"Is that Wynonie Harris?"

"Uh, yes." Mae's eyes were glued to Ellen, Butch's mom thinner than she remembered as Mae got a closer look at her. She wasn't wearing lipstick, but she didn't have that puffy look about her face either, the yellowish pallor. She stumbled as she came closer, however, and Mae rushed to her and helped her into an empty chair, the woman's thin body surprisingly frail beneath the loose vault suit she was wearing. "My dad should be in within the next twenty minutes. Should I call him now?"

"Just feeling dehydrated," Ellen slurred, holding an unsteady hand to her head. Mae felt her forehead and the skin of her exposed arm, finding both dry and papery. Warm to the touch but not feverish. There was no give to her skin, either. Just the whiff of liquor that followed her around.

Mae pulled a water bottle from the shelf and handed it over, needing to confirm before she hooked her up to an IV. "When was the last time you urinated?"

"Tried to a couple of times already, but no luck." Ellen shook her head, sagging forward and Mae sprung into action.

She stretched over to the intercom and hit the 'on' button, paging her dad over the vault PA. She then prepped the patient, helping her into the gurney before pulling on gloves and grabbing a catheter and a pouch of the stuff from the small fridge they kept them in.

She had Ellen's disinfected arm hooked up to an IV by the time James arrived. Good thing too, because Mae couldn't stop staring at Ellen's arms. Bruises. Like that time in the bathroom. From needles, she had assumed when she'd first seen them.

"Dehydration," Mae reported, stepping aside as he came in. Were those bruises from an IV? Or something else? James took over and she busied herself by pulling the screen in front of the gurney, blocking it off from the rest of the clinic.

"When did you have your last drink, Ellen?"

"Last? I wasn't counting it as my last, Doctor Cohen," Ellen smiled crookedly as James tried to flash a light in her eyes.

"Work with me, Ellen. Was it beer? Something stronger?"

"Bourbon was always the breakfast choice. Just a lil' splash in the crap they call coffee and it is systems a-go…"

Mae stared. She couldn't help it. Ellen nearly fell off the gurney, swaying as her dad tried to get a straight answer out of her.

"And when was breakfast? Two hours ago? Ten hours ago?" James caught Mae staring and finally reached in his pocket. "Honey, would you get me her chart?"

Mae caught the keys he tossed her way without thinking, trying to take in what she was seeing. Ellen was a drunk most of the time, but this was something new. She was nearly belligerent and suffering from dehydration. Her addiction was reaching a new level.

She glanced at the keys in her hands for a second, mind grinding to a halt. The keys to his drawer _._ To the drawer in his office where kept all their files locked away.

Realization spurred her forward as Ellen slurred behind her.

"Wait, wait, I _need_ this song playing…"

Mae stopped, ejected her holotape and went back to Butch's mom. She took Ellen's Pip-boy and inserted the holotape into the woman's device. Nat King Cole continued serenading them with Too Young as James checked her vitals.

"Thank you." Ellen grabbed Mae's arm before she stepped away again, dragging her back, the thin woman's grip surprisingly strong in that moment. "Thank you. It was my first dance with Butchie's dad, on our wedding day. Our parents were so unhappy, so we did it to spite them somewhat." Her smile was amused, sloppy but happy. Her expression then crumpled and she let out a broken sob, her hold on Mae gone as she buried her face in her hands. "Please don't tell him. Please don't let him see me this way…"

Mae's anguished gaze met her dad's over Ellen. But James could only spare her a glance before he returned to his patient.

Mae went to her dad's office and sunk into his chair. She sat there for a moment while they were preoccupied, unlocking and flicking through the files with quick fingers. She pulled the E. DeLoria and F. Gomez files out and rested them on her lap, flipping Freddie's open.

She closed it again almost immediately, shutting her eyes tightly. A cold feeling slid down her spine, stopping her. She couldn't. She couldn't do this.

Heartbeat echoing in her ears steadily, she took a breath and let it out slowly, her hand lingered over her own file. Plucking it out, she opened it to face a picture of herself stapled to the right flap of the file, her name and age typed at the bottom. Mae Catherine Cohen, Age: thirteen. Her hair had been trimmed short when she'd been younger, wavy around her chin. She looked… she looked like such a sad kid. Eyes tired and dull without her glasses covering them, the skin underneath shadowed dark and deep. Like she hadn't slept in months, even though she had spent a lot of time adhered to her bed, sleeping most of the days away. Her expression was blank, listless. Vacant. A house without its lights on. A zit was on her chin, on the right side. This had to have been taken right around the time when it started. Or right after the medication. She couldn't quite remember, but it was sometime before the two bad years that followed.

Her spine curved over the file, her posture bent in a protective position she wasn't aware of. A strange ache had bloomed in her chest and it felt crushing, tears prickling as she looked at the picture. It was now close to a year since she had felt that low. But it still felt like a punch in the gut to be reminded. To see what she had looked like when it began. Mae couldn't stand the thought of anyone seeing her file, seeing that picture. No fucking way.

She closed it, slipped her file back in order in the drawer along with Freddie's. She shut the drawer sharply, locked it firmly. She couldn't do that to Freddie. And it didn't sit right to do it to Ellen DeLoria, either.

She handed Ellen's chart to James, went back to her desk and didn't try to listen in once they began to speak in low voices.

They all had their own monsters they wanted to hide.

* * *

Her problem remained, though. And she didn't have many options to get out from beneath Butch's thumb.

The thought nagged at her as she mixed the soil for the planters in the greenhouse. Maybe she should take a page from Butch's book and start following him around. See what she could blackmail _him_ with. But the thought of Ellen brought that idea short. This whole thing had started because she had found them in a position he didn't want her to see. And she had been exposed to it anyway.

Not that she had the time to stalk him, even if she wanted to. She was already behind schedule with her onions. She'd drawn up a timeline, a rough sketch of the project growth schedule. If she was careful, she could have some spring onions by the end of March and full grown bulbs by the beginning of June. Just in time to present before the G.O.A.T. Mae had also planned for the possible setbacks that came with a grow project, especially when she didn't have seedlings to start with. But it still rubbed her the wrong way that she was already off to a slow start because of her own lab partner.

And now, the only upper hand she could've gotten, she had pushed away. Because of morals. Hypocritical morals. Her dad had taught her that certain rules were worth breaking. The problem always lay in finding which rules those were.

Temper simmering, she sweated under the lamps in the greenhouse, in the steady temperature of the lights it took to keep 101's vegetation growing. She finally took off her dust covered gloves to unzip her suit and roll it down, tying the arms around her waist to let her skin breathe in the tank top she wore underneath. She was in the process of filling the tenth can with her mixed soil when she heard a whistle.

She gave an answering whistle of her own and heard a familiar gait on the metal steps leading into the greenhouse.

"When I say I looked for you everywhere, I mean that literally. I almost skipped the greenhouse again."

Mae blew a few strays out of her face, brow arching at Freddie. "Thought your mom had you locked up for the day?"

He sighed, long and low. "Not sure when she's gonna get the idea that I'm not meant for inventory, but it wasn't today." He leaned back against one of the islands holding a crop of peas. "You almost done?"

"Just finishing up." She filled two more cans with the nutrient-rich soil and placed them in a wide planter she had on the floor. "So management's not your thing and you don't want to become part of security."

"Ding ding ding."

Mae grabbed the last three cans and filled them up as she thought. "What do you want to do, Fred?"

"Honestly?" He looked at the metal ceiling above them, the hum of the lamps filling the silence. "Nothing."

Mae's brows lifted. "You wanna be a layabout?"

"I want a family."

That caught her by surprise. She wasn't sure why, but it did. Maybe because it wasn't something Mae really thought about when it came to her future. Doctor, sure, but family? As much as she avoided thinking about the lottery, about their future lives as spouses to people they didn't love? She couldn't even think about children.

She dusted her hands off, adding the last can to her planter. She rose from kneeling on the floor up to a crouch and looked up at him. "Help me up, yeah?"

Freddie snorted, pushing her out of the way to pick up the planter. She toppled over in her crouch and laughed as he lifted it up. "Where's your partner anyway?"

She shrugged when she stood. "Breaking the law somewhere."

"I thought I saw…"

But he trailed off when Paul and Susie stumbled into the greenhouse, hanging off of each other and laughing before they spotted her and Freddie. Mae's eyes met theirs and she tensed as they all stared at each other. The greenhouse was too small for all of them.

"Hey Freddie," Susie began sweetly. "Oh, should we both makes ourselves scarce and give these two some privacy? Let your friend and Paulie smooth this over?" Susie's tone was innocent but her green eyes and smile were sharp.

Mae had to remind herself to seem indifferent. But when she looked at Paul and saw the embarrassment on his face, she knew. He had told Susie about them. And if Susie knew, others would as well.

Her expression hardened.. She hadn't meant to keep her short relationship with Paul a secret, it just turned out that way. Besides- "It's none of your business."

"You're right. There's nothing to talk about anyway. Paul was smart enough to dump you pretty fast. Bet he couldn't even get a moan out of your frigid mouth, it was probably like trying to make out with a dead body." She grinned at her own snark, her pretty face hard to look at.

"What the hell, Susie?" Freddie. Dear, lovable Freddie.

Mae tasted something like bile in her throat as her eyes wandered to Paul, to see her own humiliation reflected back. But she also saw the shame bleeding through. God, was that what he thought of her? Is that why Susie was being so specific?

It hurt. More than Mae could have guessed, it made her shaky in the knees, shaky in her very foundation.

"I didn't... I..." he faltered, shaking his head. Paul, at a loss for words. It shouldn't have surprised her.

Mae swallowed thickly, put down her used gloves. She walked past them without another word, eyes blurry. Turning at the exit, she crashed right into Butch who had been leaning against the wall outside.

"Fuck _me,"_ she cursed, backing off as she registered who it was. Of course she'd run into Butch right now.

"What's that? Another proposition?" he smirked. But it fell a little when he looked at her face.

"Good thing you caught her. I wasn't done with my questions and she was being rude." Susie was relentless, following her out, Paul remaining by the doorway and he looked at anything but Mae.

Mae wanted nothing more than to get away from them all. But she couldn't run.

"Look, we just came to check something really quick and we did. Let's go, Susie." Paul wrapped a hand around her arm and pulled her with him and Susie let him, keeping her gaze on Mae as she was led away.

"How did you ever date her?"

"Shut up, Sue."

"Ugh, don't call me that Paulie."

Mae glared at her shoes, at anything and everything but Butch who remained behind.

"Did you enjoy the front row seat?" she snapped, voice surprisingly steady when he didn't say anything.

"What the hell was her deal?" Freddie wondered, coming to stand beside her.

Mae wanted the ground to swallow her up.

"You want my two cents, pipsqueak? Get better at running." Butch said it without any bite, leaning back against the wall again. "Or learn how to pick your fights better."

"I'm not scared of Susie," Mae scoffed. "And if that was your best advice, it sucks. I'm not buying it."

"Paulie wouldn't ever hit a broad." Butch said with a roll of his eyes.

"You know that's not who this is about."

Butch looked at her warily.

Freddie frowned, still holding her planter. "You guys about done? Not that this isn't entertaining, but you know. What. The. Fuck."

Mae wanted to go. But her feet wouldn't move and she opened her mouth without even thinking. "You'd better stop being an asshole to her."

"Are we hanging out here? All of us, buddy-buddy?" Freddie let out an exasperated breath when neither Mae or Butch responded, walking ahead. "Fine. Just yell if he tries to murder you."

"Careful there, tin-man." Butch's eyes had narrowed but he remained where he was. "Whatever's leaked into that sponge brain of yours, I promise you, you don't want to open your mouth about it."

"I'm not sure who you were trying to protect," she hissed, leaning in. "But not bringing in your mom for treatment when she's doing this bad is criminal."

She saw the blood drain from his face, blue eyes unfocused and roiling with something she couldn't quite name. "What?"

"Your mom, dick. Why you didn't bring her in-"

"Where is she?"

Fear. That's what she hadn't been able to place. It was in his tone, clear as day on his face now that she recognized it.

"She's at the clinic, or at least she was this morning-"

Butch rushed toward the clinic, didn't wait for her to finish.


	9. Chapter 9

Mae felt Freddie's stare as they walked the halls to her apartment, and it made the back of her neck prickle.

"Wanna talk?" he finally ventured.

"'Bout what?"

"Susie. Or Paul." Freddie sighed, adjusting his hold on the planter. "Or Butch, if you're so inclined."

"It's no use talking about any of them."

She unlocked the apartment and led Freddie into her living room, murmuring a 'thank you' when Freddie set the planter down on the table. She didn't realize she had been staring at nothing until Freddie's vault suit came into her periphery, stopping in front of her. She blinked, looking up.

"You know…" He scratched the back of his head, hesitating. "You know you can come to me for anything, right?"

She nodded, giving him a brief smile. But her mind was elsewhere, on the way Butch looked when she told him about his mom, on his naked fear.

"Hey," Freddie tugged on one of her braids, "seriously. I know this whole lab partner issue is because I was paired with Amata. I hate that you're having to deal with Butch because of me."

Mae nearly snorted. It was definitely _not_ Freddie's doing that had gotten her where she was.

Freddie fidgeted and Mae realized she hadn't responded. But when his hand strayed from her hair to her chin, fingers feather light on her jaw as he tipped her face up, she couldn't quite think of what to say. She remained still, unused to his touch. Freddie's contact was casual most times; an arm around her shoulders, a playful nudge. Never anything this close.

"I mean it, Mae. If you're in over your head, you'd let me know, right?"

"I'm not." She wasn't sure if her response was true. But to tell Freddie when she hadn't even talked to Amata about her predicament yet was unheard of.

Freddie studied her, and Mae was trapped for a moment in the way his eyes traveled from her eyes to her mouth. The need to swallow hit her hard, but she didn't want to be obvious. Not when this was the closest Freddie had ever gotten to her.

She swallowed anyway and her hand encircled his wrist. "What's going on, Fred?"

"What do you mean?" She felt his breath on her face and it was sweet; bubble gum or gumdrops or some other candy he carried in his pockets. That's how they'd first become friends. Amata had been crying and Mae had been trying to console her. It was Freddie's offer of sweets that had gotten her smiling again. It was familiar and comforting and so _Freddie_ that her heart ached as she looked at him.

"With you, I mean?" He stiffened, but she kept her hand around his wrist. "I'm worried about you."

"There's nothing to be worried about." He backed up, pulling himself away, cutting their contact. His expression closed off and she cursed mentally as he became skittish. "Nothing's going on. Why would you ask that?"

The PA crackled to life, scaring the bejesus out of both of them.

"Mae Cohen, to the clinic."

"Guess you gotta go." Freddie shrugged, hands in his pockets as he looked to the floor. "I'll see you later?"

She wanted to stay and talk this out with him. even as another part of her felt the pull towards the door, towards the clinic. In the end, she merely sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, later Fred."

* * *

James spread the schedule out on his desk and she and Jonas leaned in to study it closely.

"Sixteen beers in sixteen hours?" she finally asked. "And this is meant as a _safe_ detox method?"

"Ellen's threshold is higher than this," James said, tone serious. "But that's not the main problem. There were traces of Med-X in her system, too small for us to actually measure."

"The bruising on her arm, you mean?" Mae frowned at her dad's nod. "Why is she on Med-X?"

"We didn't prescribe it," James said, looking grave. "She's using, but she refuses to tell me where she's getting it from. Unfortunately with it in her system, she'll have to get through the withdrawal without any medication for the worst of it." He tapped the schedule he had printed out. "This is her taper schedule for the next few days. Her liver enzymes are high and she is showing signs of fibrosis, but we still need to test her for other possible issues. The mix of alcohol and Med-X can be completely damaging to her liver and we need to clean her out. Before she gets worse.."

Mae studied the schedule silently, thinking of what her dad had not said. A mixture of those two in high enough amounts could lead to her not breathing. Could end with her in a coma. Or a stroke. What had Ellen been thinking?

She still couldn't shake the anger that Butch hadn't brought her in before, that he'd been trying to hide this. But she also felt an unexpected sympathy for him. For the fucked up situation. She would deny it to her death bed if asked, but there it was.

"There is some good news," her father continued. "It was no small part that thanks to the quick response of our team, Ellen remained conscious and I was able to get a pretty clear idea of her recent history without adding anything to her system that would have led to further harm."

Mae didn't realize her dad meant her when he said 'team' until she looked up and caught the smile he was giving her, his eyes creasing. Jonas clapped Mae on the shoulder, squeezing it with a "Great work this morning, sport."

Mae bit her lip, a smile threatening. "I did what you taught me."

"And you did it well." Mae felt warmth spread through her. But James grew serious again. "And that is why we have you in on this. You acted decisively and efficiently during a critical moment. You will be having your G.O.A.T. in a few months and it's about time you get more hands on experience with patients."

James nodded towards the schedule. "With Ellen's predilection to substances, I don't want to start her off on benzodiazepines to get her through it. Even a low dosage could be damaging. So we're going to try to clean her up the old fashioned way. And we're all going to take turns keeping her within this schedule."

"And you want me to be part of watch duty as well?"

"We're going to have her under twenty-four-hour watch for the next few days. We'll take shifts, with yours being shorter than ours, of course. It does mean some double shifts for a couple of days, but we'll try to keep it to a minimum." James' gaze turned serious and Mae's spine stiffened, her back straight. "Are you ready for this?"

Her first patient. Mae didn't hesitate. "Yes."

"Good." James smiled proudly. "Now come on, we have a lot to cover before we let Ellen know the details."

* * *

Her holotape was still playing when they approached the screened-off area where Ellen lay, Peggy Lee singing about a fever while Mae hoped in vain that Butch would've made himself scarce by the time they had finished in the office. But he still sat near his mom's bed, busy with something on his Pip-boy as Ellen slept fitfully next to him. Her head was draped on his shoulder.

It would've been sweet if it wasn't so odd for her to witness. And the dirty look he gave her promising swift retribution was enough to knock some of the familiar annoyance back into her as she gazed back cooly.

"You got news, doc?" Butch asked, eyes sliding to James.

"We have some things to discuss with your mother, yes. But we'll wait until she's awake."

Butch turned his head, murmuring to her quietly and patting her arm. Ellen stirred, waking with a sudden start and a wail, nearly falling off the gurney but for Butch's steadying arm.

"Relax, ma. The doc has to talk to you," Butch shared quietly as she sat up, still clearly disoriented. He was using a tone Mae hadn't heard from him before and she felt like she shouldn't be there, listening and observing how gentle he was.

"Ellen, we have finalized the treatment plan we spoke about. I'll let Jonas walk you through it, but I need to borrow your son for a moment."

"Uh, yes, Doctor, thank you," she mumbled, sitting up completely when Butch stood.

Jonas took the vacated seat and began explaining the taper schedule to Ellen.

"Honey, would you come with me for a minute?"

Mae followed James to a stop on the other side of the screen, far enough away that they could speak without having to worry about being heard.

"Butch, we're going to be keeping your mother here for the next few days," James began quietly.

"What? Why?" Butch's fear was back, the alarm in his eyes fresh. "Is she sick? Don't tell me it's that hepatitis shit cuz she ain't showing the signs."

"It doesn't seem to be hepatitis. But without further tests, we cannot completely rule it out." Mae was sure she was staring as much as her dad was at this little tidbit from him. He'd researched this at some point if he knew what to look for and Mae was suddenly struck by a memory of last year's project. How Wally and Butch were supposed to do a report on liver diseases. Mae couldn't remember whether they had finished it or not, but she could picture Butch - younger and scowling at a textbook - researching such a subject. When it hit so close to home... "She does show signs of some liver scarring, however, and we need to focus on reversing it. Fortunately, she has agreed to treatment. The problem lies in how delicate her detox is going to be. We need to do it here under medical supervision. To make sure she is in no danger."

Butch continued looking suspicious, his hands clenching and unclenching. If Mae were in his shoes, she'd be more thankful. Or at least less hostile looking. What a prick.

"My daughter will be included as part of the watch and I need to ask a favor from you, Mr. DeLoria."

It was Mae's turn to gaze at James suspiciously.

"I need you to remain with her when she is watching your mother."

"What?!" She hissed, horrified, even as Butch's eyebrows rose in disbelief.

"Neither Jonas or myself will be available during her shifts and I insist."

Butch chuckled, shaking his head slightly. "So lemme get this straight - you don't trust your kid to watch my ma on her own?"

Mae crossed her arms, glaring at James. "Thanks, Dad."

"It's nothing against you, sweetie," James said with a calm hand on Mae's shoulder before he turned back to Butch. "It's only a precaution. If your mother has a bad episode, I want someone to be available if she were to get out of hand. It will help to have another person here and it's the only way I will have some peace of mind."

Butch looked like he was weighing his options, his gaze back on Ellen on the gurney. She looked small on the bed under the sheets, a contrast to when she seemed bigger than life while drunk. She remembered the way Ellen had grabbed her earlier that day. She was hiding some iron under that frailty.

"If you're not comfortable with this arrangement, I can ask Chief Hannon to provide some additional help in the form of one of the security team-"

"No," both Mae and Butch said at the same time. They glanced at each other and looked away almost immediately, Mae's face burning.

"Nah doc, no need to bring those dipshits in," Butch said in a lower tone, finally looking back at her dad. "I'll hang around."

"Good, I'm glad to have that settled then. It might make it easier on Ellen, as well."

"Great," Mae muttered, meeting Butch's look with one of her own.

But she wasn't going to back down on this. It was the first time her dad had given her this kind of responsibility, this sort of trust. It was monumental.

"You did great, sweetie. You'll do great at this as well," James reassured.

Mae caught Butch rolling his eyes, 'daddy's girl' muttered under his breath.

She wouldn't mess this up, she promised herself.


	10. Chapter 10

He was gonna run outta smokes before the night was through at the rate he was going.

Eyeing his dwindling supply, Butch took another lungful and let his head fall back, exhaling at the ceiling. The plume curled in the recycled air, the light from the hall outside dim through the curtains. He had cleared out all the bottles already. Fished them out from behind the mismatched couch cushions, squeezed in-between the wall and the dresser, from inside one of her drawers. It hadn't been the drawer _with_ her drawers, thank fuck, and she hadn't gotten creative at hiding them, so there was that. But the sour stink of old liquor hovering like a nosy neighbor was gonna be harder to get rid of.

He'd wait to scrub the place down until after he got to see her. Stretched out on the couch in the semi-dark of his living room as he was, it was the most relaxed he'd felt all week. Maybe now that she was stuck in the clinic under twenty-four-hour watch, his ma would stop disappearing and he could finally get a few solid hours.

He rubbed the heel of his hand over dry eyes, taking another drag. The day was still young. Plenty could still drop trou and piss all over it considering there were about twenty-two hours left to go (02:07 his Pip-boy read - Paulie was running late). Especially with the way things had been going belly up for him recently.

She'd done this a few times before - disappeared on him. He'd go to sleep, leaving her at the table with her cards and her bottle. By the time he'd wake up to take a leak, she'd be gone, the apartment empty. But it had been a few years since she'd done it. And when she had shown up the next day, slurring and unsteady, it hadn't been outta the norm. Not that on its own. Her job as a janitor kept her moving for most hours of the day, kept her busy, but she always kept her flask with her. It meant a bender after work hours wasn't too far off at any one time. But her pupils had been blown wide this time, and she hadn't been in her right mind, had called him-

He crushed his cigarette into the ashtray on the floor and pulled another out, flicked his lighter on.

It didn't matter what she called him, really. Point was he thought she'd hit the drink harder than ever. That drowning in the bottom of a bottle had been chased with a dedication she usually didn't have. And if he'd left her alone when she'd rushed over to puke in the nearest restroom, he might've left it at that. But he'd followed. Dunked a towel in cold water and pressed it to her forehead, tried to get her to calm herself. When she'd lifted a hand to hold the towel on her own, the sleeve of her suit had slid down. The marks had become visible.

He'd peeled her material back, laid disbelieving eyes on the finger-shaped bruises around her wrists. Around her forearm and biceps. The bruising surrounding a pinprick of dried blood in the crook of her elbow. When she'd flinched at his hold...

Butch felt it again, the need to hurt whoever had done this still raw and bubbling beneath his skin. Whoever was responsible would find out no one messed with his family. Not while he was living and breathing.

Cohen walking in on them had just been the icing on top of a shit-flavored cake. He'd done what he could to keep Cohen quiet until he could figure out the full story. Before the rest of the vault got something else to lord over Ellen DeLoria.

A soft knock on the door made Butch sit up. The loose sleeves of his vault suit hung around his knees as he went to peer out the window.

"What took ya?" he finally asked, letting Paul in.

"The Chief took a lot longer than usual to knock out," Paul said with a shrug. He reached into his Tunnel Snake jacket and handed over a holotape. "This should have what you asked for, but it's encrypted. Just like all his stuff. I slipped a dummy into his rotation, so the faster you crack this, the better."

Butch slipped the holotape into his Pip-boy, scrolled through the settings to check the encryption. "I'm gonna need a terminal for this one."

"Good luck with that." Paul hesitated, brows scrunched up as he sat down. "What do you need it for anyway?"

"Just trying to stay outta your pop's hair," Butch shrugged. He wanted to keep the little he knew under wraps for now. And the shift schedules for the security team would help narrow down who might know what.

"Why? You trying to hook up with Mary again?" Paul smiled knowingly, patting his pockets. "Or did Janice finally respond?"

Butch grinned and took a drag, but he let the question hang. Don't confirm, don't deny. Paulie didn't need to know that Mary had never let it get beyond a few make out sessions and some heavy petting. He didn't need to know that she was back with Tom. Full time now, no cheating anymore. She'd grown out of it, she'd told him. Janice, on the other hand... she'd be paired off this year and she was starting to get that antsy look about her.

"Susie's old man still trying to pair you two up?" Butch sniggered, deciding to change the subject. His family's reputation had worked in his favor for once, and it was keeping him out of Allen Mack's pool of suitors for his vicious baby girl.

"Yeah. Which isn't going to lead to anything." Paul rolled his eyes, finally pulling his pack of cigarettes out. "I don't know what she's thinking, trying to get with Freddie. Her dad's gonna kill her when he finds out. If not one of her brothers."

Butch took another drag and smirked, his curiosity real and scratching at his insides. "That why she went after Cohen like that? Making her seem like your sloppy seconds."

Paul's ears reddened under his watchful eye. "I was trying to defuse things before Susie twisted what I said around again. You know how she gets."

"It's why I kept telling you not to tell that broad shit."

"Yeah, I know, I know." He finally lit up, leaning back. "'Sides, I don't see Freddie going for her. Not when he's been between Mae and Amata for years already. Lucky guy, I guess."

Butch snorted but decided not to comment. None of it mattered anyway. When the Overseer decided who got who, no one else's plans would matter. Butch was sixteen, the oldest in their age group and the last thing he wanted to think about was being tied up to any one girl. He'd have the rest of his future to deal with that brand of the Overseer's punishment.

Paul glanced around, finally noticing the emptiness. "Where's your mom, anyway?"

Butch was saved from having to answer when another knock landed on his door. A quick double-tap.

Paul jumped to his feet. "Shit, man. My dad must've followed me."

"Make yourself scarce," Butch hissed as he went to the door, dropping his cigarette in the half-empty bottle of Nuka on the end table. He peeked through the curtain and almost did a double take. Taking a quick glance behind him, he didn't see Paul but he still slipped outside, shutting the door behind him.

"What are you doing here, Cohen?"

He kept his voice low, pulled her toward a darker part of the hallway to stare at her in disbelief. She was still fresh out of the shower. Her hair was still damp and she smelled clean, but without the sharpness of antiseptic that usually clung to her. He was tempted to check the time again.

She didn't answer for a minute, her sharp gaze darting all over him and he frowned, waiting. The less noise they made the better. Her cheeks were pink and when she finally opened her mouth, she shut it again along with her eyes, scrunching them up.

"What the hell, tin-man? You go mute again?"

She wanted to punch him. He could tell, once her eyes popped open, and he grinned. He preferred to see her riled up than scared silent.

"I wanted to talk about tomorrow," she finally muttered.

"I'm all ears, kid."

"Oh, fuck _y-."_ She stopped herself, scowling at the floor and his grin widened. She let out a deep breath and finally looked him in the eye again. "Look, get it out of your system today, alright? Because tomorrow's about your mom. I want a truce while we're doing this."

He quit smiling at her words. Gave her a considering look. Cohen had been nothing but surprises this week. Between his ma and her, he'd had his hands full, his attention splintered. And if she was offering an out for the next few days...

"Yeah, whatever. Truce. For now."

He'd be an idiot not to take it.

A sharp nod from her and she had turned to leave before he held his hand out, arm bent at the elbow. She stared at it warily before her eyes darted up and looked at him like he'd sprouted a second head.

He wanted to pull his hand back, didn't even know why he'd done it. But it was out there already, hanging in midair between them. And he wasn't about to pull it back now. Tunnel Snakes didn't back down.

She hesitated some more and Butch finally said with more edge than he meant to, "Can't shake on it like a man, tin- _man?"_

She stiffened, tense in a way she wasn't a moment ago, and he wanted to pull that back, too. The urge was strong enough so that he had to wonder what the hell was wrong with him. Since when had he given two fucks about how his words affected her? Ever?

He was more used to getting almost no reaction from her, he told himself.

She took his hand and it was a solid grip for someone her size. But he'd learned not to underestimate her. He forgot the strength behind her frame, didn't think about how she pitched when she wasn't on the mound. She had reminded him with a sharp fist to the mouth.

The handshake was over rather quickly, her expression frosty as she turned on her heel. She took the smell of clean soap and shampoo with her cloud of hair, silent on her feet. She was gone like she was never there before he knew it.

He walked back into his living room with a quiet _swish_ of air.

"Was that Mae?" Paul asked, moving away from the window.

"Uh, yeah." Paul raised his eyebrows and Butch felt the need to add, "Project stuff. You know her. Nerd through and through."

"Yeah," Paul nodded and let it drop, but Butch could tell he wasn't convinced. "Look, Imma head home. Get some sleep. You look like you need some shut eye too."

"Yeah, thank your pops for the info he provided," Butch said, holding the holotape up.

Paul snorted and clapped him on the shoulder before leaving Butch to slump alone on his couch. He needed to sleep, felt it like ground up glass in his eyes. He set the alarm to go off in a few hours and lay back on the couch.

In that stage between waking and dreaming, he was ten years old again. Sick with the flu, burning up at home with no relief but to let the sickness run its course. His ma had gotten him out of bed after she got home from work, yanked him up and up into one of the upper-level bathrooms. Into the one with the bathtubs, the one that she always called 'hoity-toity' because only the upper-level residents could use them. But she had filled one of the metal tubs with cold water during her afternoon shift and left it full so she could bring him after. She'd sat on the lip, pressing a cold bottle on his forehead - a Nuka or beer, didn't matter.

She broke the rules to make him feel better. It was the _least_ he could do for her in return. Blood was blood, after all.

* * *

"How is she?" Mae asked, handing James a thermos of chamomile tea.

"As expected," he answered with a sigh, twisting the cap of the thermos off.

He looked grayer, she noticed. Not just tired, but hollow in the cheeks, almost gaunt. His beard did a good job of hiding the worst of it, but Mae's eyes narrowed imperceptibly as she took the seat in front of his desk. The bones of the wrist that wasn't covered by a Pip-boy stood out sharply under the sleeve of his lab coat. This was more than his last sixteen hours at the clinic.

"How are you doing?" She kept the worry out of her question, but couldn't keep herself from asking. James hated when anyone nagged over him.

"Me? I'm fine." James blinked in confusion, drinking straight out of the mouth of the thermos, both his hands gripping its warmth. "Ellen slept very little. I poured her first beer about fifteen minutes ago." He hesitated, taking another sip of his tea. "The shaking had started, but it's stopped."

Mae set the alarm on her Pip-boy for Ellen's next drink and made a quick notation on the log.

"I haven't been able to get a word out of her."

That... wasn't unusual. But one important question needed to be asked.

"Why did she agree to get treatment?"

James stared at the desktop where her file lay, eyes distant. "She wouldn't tell me that, either."

They sat in silence for a moment, mulling their own thoughts.

Mae glanced at her Pip-boy and noted the time; five to seven. Might as well. "Get some rest, dad."

* * *

The hardest part wasn't the quiet moments. Silences, Mae could deal with. She would've preferred them in most scenarios, in all honesty.

Nope, the worst parts were when Ellen opened her mouth. She was sixteen hours into her taper schedule and had gone from a restless sleep to suffering through withdrawal. The taper was supposed to help. But she wasn't taking too well to the pre-poured plastic cups of beer she got on the hour.

The small, crying woman was gone and in her place was a verbally abusive alcoholic going through withdrawal. In the three hours since her shift started, Mae had heard a list of names thrown at Butch. Ungrateful. Disappointment. Disgrace. Traitor. Punk. And those were just the words. Her tone made them ten times worse. The only time he spoke up was when she mentioned his dad, and even then it was only to tell her to 'give it a rest, ma.'

"You aren't one of Butchie's friends," Ellen observed with a curl of her lip after fifteen minutes of not spewing anything bitter at her son.

"I'm not," Mae asserted, glancing up from her textbook. She was almost glad to be the focus of someone's attention for once. It was less uncomfortable than having to be a spectator in the verbal abuse Ellen was determined to impart. "Just classmates and lab partners."

Ellen's eyes narrowed and Butch shifted in the seat he was slouched in.

"You punched my Butchie on your tenth birthday party," Ellen accused.

Mae highlighted another passage in her book, not looking up this time. "He tried to steal one of my presents."

"He said you were the one that stole his switchblade."

"He put glue in my hair. Twice." If Ellen wanted this firefight, Mae had plenty of ammo. Besides, the longer she kept Ellen talking, the less awkward their waiting would be. She wasn't sure how Butch dealt with this on a daily basis. "I had to chop most of my hair off both times."

Ellen's expression didn't change and Mae continued going over her textbook.

"You're as much a bitch as your mom was."

"Geez, ma..."

"Wouldn't know. Never met her." She wanted to leave it at that, but something in Mae was battling against it, urging her on. Her gaze swept from her book to Ellen. "But I can see where Butch gets his lovely disposition from."

The tension was palpable, Mae not flinching under Ellen's glower.

"Alright, enough." Butch grabbed the shoulder of Mae's suit and pulled her outside of the screen where she shrugged free from his grasp.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he hissed. "She's sick."

Mae crossed her arms, setting her stance. "Doesn't excuse her behaviour."

"It does."

"It _doesn't."_ Mae shook her head. "Just because she's an alcoholic doesn't mean she gets to treat people that way. Just like it doesn't excuse _you_ from being an ass all the time."

Butch looked confused and Mae took some pity on him as his blue eyes stayed on her. "Why don't you go get something to keep her entertained, to keep her mind off the fact she's here."

"Like what?"

"Beats me. What does she like to do when she's not drinking?"

Butch took such a long moment to think about this that Mae felt another inkling of that sympathy for him.

"She likes music," Mae tried weakly, the feeling making her uncomfortable.

"Yeah, she likes dancing too, but that ain't happenin'." Butch sighed, running a hand through his carefully greased up hair. It didn't look so neat anymore and Mae found herself staring without meaning to, remembering how he had looked the night before in the sleeveless shirt he wore under his vault suit. Fuller than she remembered from tryouts last season. The line of his collarbone under the white material, framed by shoulders he hid under his jacket and bad posture.

It was enough to make her feel hot under her own vault suit and she realized he had spoken without her catching what he said.

"Mm?"

"Cards. You know how to play cards?"

"I know Go Fish?"

"You're hopeless, tin-man."


	11. Chapter 11

**Warning:** this chapter was... hard. Please note that there is mention of assault/sexual assault near the end of the chapter.

* * *

"So, I figured it out," Butch said, dropping his cigarette under his boot as she hurried down the stairwell.

Mae bent to work on the locked door, not looking at him. She hadn't even had her first cup of coffee yet, but her grunt was apparently all he needed to continue.

"You suck at poker."

Her bobby pin broke and she growled low in her throat. It was going to be this type of morning.

"You don't know how to bluff," he continued, head leaning into her periphery.

"Why would I bluff a pair of fours?" she muttered, pulling another pin from her hair.

"See, that's where we're different. I would've. My ma had already folded."

"You had a flush," she pointed out, pulling the broken pieces of the pin out of the lock before trying with the new one. She had learned all the hands, even if she hadn't gotten any good ones while they all attempted civility in the remaining hour of her shift. "Bluffing would've gotten me nowhere."

"That's exactly my point, though. I could tell when you were bluffing. When you didn't, I figured your cards _royally_ sucked." She shook her head at his stupid pun, wondering if he was even aware of it. "If you had skin in the game, you'd get better at bluffing real quick."

Her curiosity was piqued, but her concentration remained on the lock.

"Next hand we play, we should bet. Make it more interesting, ya know? Start off small if you wanna wimp out from the start. Chores. Ration coupons. Reading Day."

She shook her head. Nope, Reading Day was not on the table. There was no way she would do any more than what they were required to do. "We'll talk about it next game."

"Why not now?"

"I'm not staying."

He remained silent and she finally heard the satisfying click of the lock. She stood, glancing at her Pip-boy.

"What d'ya mean you're not staying?"

"Exactly what I said." Mae blew a strand of hair out of her face, wishing she had braided it again. It was too long already. "Things to do, people to see, etcetera, etcetera."

She turned to go, but Butch caught her arm and for one silly, idiotic second she wished that said arm was bare, that the contact was direct. She pulled herself free, feeling a prickle of... something when he didn't let go right away.

"You're not keeping your part of the deal," he said, but his protest was weak. Even he seemed unconvinced.

She nearly sighed. This wasn't turning out the way it was supposed to. She thought he'd be happy to have her out of his hair. No small coughs in the background that sounded like 'loser' as he tried and failed to hit the targets.

"Nothing in the deal said I had to hang around," she finally said, brow knitting. "You know the drill. Just put everything away when you're done."

"You gonna flake again later, tin-man?"

Mae turned, studied the scowl he wore. He couldn't hold her gaze for long and looked away, but his expression didn't change.

"No," she finally said, turning and walking away before he saw the way she rolled her eyes heavenward. She should've said yes. She had meant to say yes.

She shook it off before she let herself think about it too much. There was already more than enough of her time spent thinking about Butch DeLoria when other things should be taking priority. Like her project. And her expanded duties at the clinic. And her friends. She had to focus where she was needed and right now that meant one final observation in her room before she met with Amata for breakfast.

Normalcy.

* * *

"Yo, Jonas."

Jonas stopped at the sound of his name and reminded himself to count his lucky stars. He had remained blessedly childless in his near forty years of life and the child he had claimed as his own (partially) was an intelligent, caring individual who read in silence for enjoyment. Not anything close to a rude troublemaker.

He went against the urge to rush back to his patient and turned to face Butch, a smile plastered on his face as the teenager jogged up. "How can I be of assistance, Mr. DeLoria?"

"Are you scheduled for today?" Butch wondered, glancing around the empty-ish hall.

"I'm not on the schedule until later tonight, actually," he said with a small frown. "Shouldn't you be in class?"

"Free period," Butch shrugged easily, eyes still busy taking in their surroundings. "So who's on schedule right now?"

"James is on duty at the moment." The textbooks he'd carried out from the library archives were heavy and he shifted them in his hands. "Didn't you get a copy of the schedule?"

"I did. It's just…" He glanced over Jonas' shoulder, searching behind the med tech for what, Jonas couldn't even guess. Butch shook his head, turning before he even finished talking. "Nah, forget it. It's nothing."

Jonas watched Butch walk back to the library, confused at their entire exchange.

Once he made it back to the office, thoughts of Butch were swiftly chucked out the window. He found Mae where he'd left her, but she was slumped over James' desk, her mass of dark hair spilling around her. He sighed, looking at the clock. He'd been gone for all of ten minutes...

"Mae?"

She jerked awake in her seat, blinking owlishly up at him as he sank into the seat behind the desk. "Wazzat?"

"It's the end of our session, sport." Concern tinged his tone as he placed the texts in front of her with a heavy thud. "Insomnia getting out of hand?" It was phrased as a question, but he knew better.

Mae rubbed a hand over her face and let out a quiet breath before turning to dig through her bag. "My project's just giving me a weird sleeping schedule right now. Infancy stages."

"You have a lot going on," he agreed, exchanging the empty container she handed him for the refilled one he had ready. He watched as she popped the pill he gave her, finally adding, "I told your dad it might be too much at once."

Mae swallowed hurriedly, grimacing as she bypassed the water he offered. "I'm okay, Jonas. Really."

Jonas made a noncommittal sound, catching the way her fingers fiddled by her sides. A different polish was on her nails this time, a deep, dark red that was almost black. The shade of deoxygenated blood, he noted absently.

He tried another tactic. "Gran's been asking about you."

"... Oh?"

He hid a smile of triumph. He was able to catch it, the small hint of guilt in her tone barely there.

"She said you haven't been by since school began. That's what - three weeks already?"

"I've been stupid busy." Mae averted her eyes, studied her cuticles in her lap. "But I'll go by as soon as I can."

"Good. She misses you." He waited for a beat, letting her stew silently. A visit with his gran would be good for her, help her loosen some of that built-up tension. He stood signaling their session over. "Don't forget the books you asked for."

Mae suppressed a yawn as she stood to leave, books and school bag in tow. "I'll have them back to you ASAP."

"Take your time," he called after her but she was already gone.

He was going to have a serious talk with James about what he was piling on his kid's plate. Jonas had stepped in and provided a shoulder, an encouraging word, an ear when she needed it. And if she needed a parent to question whether she was in over her head, then he would step in for that as well.

* * *

She chalked it up to a bad week. That's all. No other reason why she had fallen asleep with her dad and Ellen just a closed door and a few feet away. She'd kept herself under the watchful eye of Amata and sometimes Freddie when she got to the point she was in now. Just had to be more careful.

She hadn't lied to Jonas, though. Part of it was indeed her project. The amount of attention needed at the beginning was the reason she had taken the planters into her apartment. Where she could keep an eye on them. Getting everything right was crucial at this stage. They needed light, but also the right amount of light. Same with the water. Leave too much inside the planters, and they would drown and she needed some of the samples to survive if she hoped to get a decent outcome-

"Earth to tin-man."

She blinked, momentarily unclear of her surroundings. The fog was thick this time, wrapping around her like styrofoam. She felt like her head was packed with it.

"Cohen."

She looked at Butch, realized he was frowning at her. "Hmm."

"I asked if you saw that?" He was pointing at the target and she forced her head in that direction, saw that one of them was still turning in circles from the hit he must've connected.

The range. Right. She was sitting cross-legged on one of the large crates, her back to the wall.

"Bullseye?" she managed.

"Bullseye." He affirmed, grinning like a madman.

"Hmm."

She turned back to the textbook she had open in her lap, scratched her nose. It felt like rubber, the scratch of her nails on her skin. She made a valiant effort to focus on what she was reading. Tried to will the fuzziness away. Why oh why had she let this happen, losing track of time before the meds kicked in-

She threaded her fingers into the hair, clenched her fist to give a small tug near her temple. The pain felt clearer on her scalp, sharper. During a particularly good tug that had the edges of her vision clearing, she saw one of his boots in her periphery. She scrambled to her feet almost immediately, the need to put distance between herself and everyone else instinctual.

She crash-landed on her back before even realizing she had lost her balance.

"What's your damage, Cohen?"

His big head was blocking the light and she closed her eyes, the pain in her skull a dull throb.

"Leave me alone," she said, tone flat and unfeeling. If she were in her right mind, she would be burning with humiliation. (God, to be seen like this.) She wasn't in her right mind, though. And all she could feel was the faint pulse of frustration, but it was buried way down somewhere. Almost out of reach.

Mostly, she was just tired. And achy. Her back and her head were probably going to be an issue.

He must've moved because the light hit her eyelids just then. Folding an arm over her face, she blocked the light out once more. But her arm was grabbed and she was hauled up quite suddenly into a sitting position. With another tug she was up and crashing into his chest and leather jacket quite suddenly, her head spinning and her stomach going along with it.

"You hit your head, genius. You swear I'm gonna let you-"

Butch yelped and jumped back as she bent over and puked right onto his shoes.

"Ah fuck."

But he kept a hand fisted on the back of her suit as she continued heaving. All over his shoes.

He sighed as she finished, wiping a shaky hand over her mouth.

"Ugh, kill me now." Almost as an afterthought, she added, "Please."

"You being dramatic, tin-man?"

"Oxymoron," she grumbled, looking away from the mess. She straightened and reached for her hankie, offering it without making eye contact.

"The hell is this supposed to do?" He pushed her offer back. "They're gonna need to hose this place down, get the sanitation crew in here to get that stink out. You ever eat anything other than sweet potatoes or carrots, 'cuz there's a ton of orange down here..."

"Kill. Me. Now."

Butch chuckled somewhere near her.

"Come on," he finally said, heading for the door. "You gotta clean this mess up. I ain't setting foot in here again otherwise."

"Promise?" But she followed behind nonetheless. Nope, she was definitely not in her right mind.

She broke away from Butch once they got upstairs, heading to the bathroom to rinse out her mouth. She let the tap run, letting the cool water soothe her throat. She stared at her reflection for an indefinite amount of time. Puking at this point wouldn't do much to sharpen her awareness. It could be minutes. It could be hours still. She was never a good judge of time when like this.

She stumbled out of the bathroom, intent on heading back to clean up before her regular shift at the clinic started.

Normally alert, she didn't see the vault security uniform until she nearly collided into him turning the corner.

Her immediate reaction was to scurry away, but she wasn't quick enough and she met Stevie's cold stare numbly as he stared down at her, hand on her shoulder. Saw his face twist into a smile.

"If it isn't my favorite neighbor."

A faint alarm was going off in her mind, but she couldn't heed it.

"Hey, M. Want to get locked up again?" he whispered in her ear, his breath hot. His hand, heavy and intrusive, tightened on her shoulder, and he made her turn with him. She felt something flutter at the edge of her awareness, a well of something pushing against the wall even as she felt her breathing change.

He pulled her along, kept her pressed tight against him as he led her down a different hall.

"Lemme go," she slurred. Okay, that was new. She didn't normally slur on her meds. When he put his other hand over her mouth, she tried pulling free again, but his hands merely clamped down harder, his fingers painful on her face. Everything was starting to close in on her the longer they walked.

She felt was herself shutting down, something stronger than the meds pulling her under. It might be better if she didn't wake up anytime soon, she thought absently as Stevie grabbed her by the neck of her suit and turned her roughly against him, hand still on her mouth.

"Remember the fun we had," he sneered, his fingers bruising as they tightened on her jaw. He let her go long enough to grab her chest and shoved her back into a closet. He closed the door swiftly and she heard him mess with the lock, with the settings. Heard the crackle of ripped up wiring. No light. No way out. Just like last time.

"Gotta say, I like what you're hiding under that suit nowadays, M."

She was left in the dark once again, her mind going numb as she hugged herself in the blackness that surrounded her.


	12. Chapter 12

**WARNING:** sexual assault imminent. This chapter is also choppy with past trauma/backstory, but I'm hoping the fragmented style I used works (...?).

If the subject matter is something you want to skip altogether, just click the link below for the end of chapter notes to get a brief rundown with minimal detail, then head on to the next chapter.

* * *

"Been a while, hasn't it M?"

The faint glow of his Pip-boy was their only light, her own arms remaining tight around her torso. She watched with a detached sort of stillness that frightened her as he cupped her chin, lifting her face. She couldn't move. He clogged her airways with his presence, burning like battery acid on her skin when he leaned in and pressed his face into the crook of her neck.

"Did you miss me?" Stevie breathed in deeply before exhaling heavily. "Too busy to remember an old pal?"

He liked to talk. As if she ever answered.

He placed his hands on her shoulders, a smile slowly spreading as he tried to force her down. But she was stiff, not giving in fast enough apparently because he hooked a foot around her knee and pulled. Until she knelt on shaky legs.

"Can't have you forgetting where your priorities should be, right M?"

Her breaths were quick and shallow, harsh in the small space. Dust motes lit a sickly green floated in the air, disturbed by their intrusion. She focused on those when he pressed a hand to her mouth, pushing her back against the wall.

"But you can make it up to me, you know?"

The rush of adrenaline scrambled to every nerve ending, but she was frozen, everything muffled. Her thought processes were gummed up, a protective film layered over her, clouding her awareness, her perception. Her subconscious drifted at a safer location, a bird let loose from its cage to put as much distance between itself and its jailer. It wouldn't last. It couldn't. Her body was wound up so impossibly tight - she'd wake up soon, come back to herself and shatter into so many tiny pieces she wouldn't be able to fit them back together.

"We can try something new. Something we'll both remember."

She heard his hand working at his belt buckle, the _clink_ of it coming loose. The security uniform was different from the vault suits, never more obvious than when he didn't have to unzip all the way from the neck down. As quick as a few seconds, he had pulled himself free and his hand was moving, working himself even though she could see he was halfway there already. She felt him press against her chin and his hand released her to rest on the back of her skull.

 _Fuck fuck fuck-_

She gagged, repulsed, her insides clawing out desperately. Stomach acid and the small bit of water she had just swallowed in the bathroom were the only contents left at this point, but she was grateful for the burn as it came up and spilled over him, over his crotch.

He backed up, cursing, and she wanted to laugh, the urge hitting her uncontrollably. It bubbled underneath the giant lump that was wedged in her throat, escaping in a shaky chuckle that was teeming with hysteria, too loud in her own ears.

"You sick bitch, you think that's funny?"

When he backhanded her and bright colors bloomed behind her eyelids, she continued laughing because it was better than crying out. She wouldn't scream. She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't-

He hit her again, his gloved hand against the fleshy side of her face, biting into her cheek and then everything ground to a halt and turned blessedly black.

* * *

 _What happened?_

They asked over and over, but she had no response.

* * *

The first time she woke up in the clinic, she remembered how blinding the light had been when she finally opened her eyes.

She remembered that, but not much else.

"Jonas, she's waking up."

There was movement out of the corner of her eye, but everything was fuzzy with her eyesight. A warm hand settled on her shoulder and she flinched at the contact, her reaction not going unnoticed.

"Are you hurt?"

The hand was gone, replaced with the faint probing of fingers and her head shook quickly, jerky as a bobblehead's. She tried to move away, "No, I'm not-"

"Can you tell us what happened?" A hand pressed onto the opposite shoulder to hold her in place and everything crystallized like glass. "Honey, please let me check-"

"- daddy, I'm not hurt-" she heard the tremor in her voice, tears threatening as she continued squirming. "Lemme _go-"_

"James."

His hands let go and she heard more than saw the heavy breath her dad released, the frustration simmering beneath when he finally said, "I'm... I need a minute."

She swallowed thickly as he walked away. He sounded lost, mournful. She had put that tone in his voice and it tore into her, to know she was the one behind it.

"Are you in any pain, Mae?"

Was she? Was pain the word for it? Did it catch everything she couldn't get out right now, what ran like lead through her limbs? There was a pit she was sinking into, agonizingly slow. Every breath was a push against the crushing weight.

She shook her head at his question. Closed her eyes and kept them closed. She pretended to sleep until she heard Jonas walk away finally. It took a long time, but he eventually did.

* * *

 _What happened?_

(I don't remember.)

* * *

They released her three days later. Couldn't find anything to keep her there, not physically, not measurable. She slept with the lights on in every room for months and when she finally got her own Pip-boy, it's radio became her constant companion in the silence.

She buried all of it. Remained silent, quiet, her thoughts dense as mercury, weighing heavy as the words in her throat. They dragged like stones going uphill, never quite falling over the edge and out of her mouth.

She avoided the expectation he looked at her with, but it was ever-present, something that had followed her around for as long as she could remember. She tried to stay away from the picture of the woman she resembled so much (the exact shade of her eyes, the specific shape of her mouth). She used to trace the smile in the picture with her pinkie, trying to understand how that smile rested like the edge of a knife in her dad's heart. It was a wound that would never close, pink scar tissue never able to form because he kept it open and raw. He would only talk about the good things, never the bad. Never anything that made her mother seem even remotely real to her. She remained someone Mae could never quite live up to, a pedestal too high to reach.

The pull of the pit surrounding her dragged and dragged at her, a deep-seated weight, a pressure that urged her to stay in her own thoughts, her own sense of insufficiency.

It was something that had always rested deep inside. A crack that would spread.

* * *

 _Who did this to you?_

(I don't know. I don't know, daddy. I promise I'm not hiding anything. I don't know.)

* * *

It happened. Again.

Stevie locked her up this time, left her in a supply closet for hours before he let her out. She wasn't aware that the door had been unlocked until she tried it, out of sheer desperation after she hadn't heard him for close to forty-six minutes. When she looked out, he had already left and she was glad she didn't have to face him, the aftermath of her first panic attack still present.

Then it happened again. And again, and then once more, for good fucking measure. And then things went from bad to nightmarish when she turned thirteen. On the morning of her birthday, he found her in the hallway. But this time, he locked himself up with her.

He left her inside once he was done. She couldn't remember getting herself out that specific time, but she had. She always made it out, eventually. And she had her Pip-boy at least, by that time. Wasn't left trembling in the dark anymore.

And then one day, she couldn't do it anymore. Couldn't imagine another day of life like this. What was the point? She was already circling the bottom. What was left but further disappointment and this loneliness that couldn't be shaken?

When she couldn't keep down the little white pills they gave her, they stuck her with a needle of it. They tried different dosages. Tested them out and asked her how she felt. She felt nothing most of the time.

But she was getting out of bed, so that was something. It was the only thing, really, but after weeks of no other progress - to her dad and Jonas, it was everything.

* * *

 _We want to help you._

(I don't... I can't remember... I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I can't remember.)

They continued asking, but she couldn't speak, her throat tight with all that was left unsaid.

* * *

She began doing well in school again. Enough so that they stopped asking questions and then it became only a blip on her record. But her interest was lacking. Lackluster.

Amata spent every free second she had with her. And they began spending an inordinate amount of time on the intact records Amata had unearthed, finding them with a small, red record player in a dusty box.

"Part of my mother's things," she said, smile bright as the moon must look, warm as the sun might feel. Mae wanted to get lost in the joy of her friend's discovery. She could barely muster a smile.

But when Amata put needle to vinyl, and the music started soaring out, music she had never heard before-

Watching Amata dance from where she lay boneless on the floor: it was happiness like she'd never encountered before. It wasn't a film, not a frozen picture.

It was Amata, hauling her to her feet and spreading her fervor with every shake and twist and turn. With every laugh that escaped as they stumbled and tried again. Mae was starving for this, for warmth, for passion, for life-

To feel something that wasn't gray and dark and dank and empty.

Amata led, movements gentle but sure, and Mae followed.

* * *

Mae woke up, disoriented. She blinked in the hazy darkness, held her breath for thirty-seven seconds.

She let it out shakily when she found she was alone. Tried the door and when it didn't budge, turned on her Pip-boy light, the green glow harsh but welcome. Her glasses were nowhere to be found and her mouth felt funny, pain radiating off it like heat. She cupped it, wincing. Tasted the bile, the spit-up, the blood in her mouth. She didn't want to think too deeply about it.

Placing a finger on her pulse point, she breathed and counted, the way she always did when she woke up from a nightmare. Until she became lost in the stutter of her own heartbeat.

It wasn't long before the shaking overtook her.

* * *

 **SO - the gist of it:**

\- Stevie takes Mae into the closet with bad intentions

\- she ends up throwing up on him before it gets too far (concussions are a bitch like...)

\- he knocks her out with a fist to the face

\- Mae goes through memories of past abuse, and how it escalated; she also goes through memories of how low she was feeling in general

\- her first bout of her depression hits around thirteen and that's about the time they start her on medication

\- she never tells anyone about what Stevie's done

\- Mae wakes up in the closet once again - alone, bruised, shaken and missing her glasses


	13. Chapter 13

He'd just finished grinding through the ghosts of the lighthouse level with no companions when he heard the whistling.

Turning the sound of his Pip-boy game off, Butch moved, boots leaving a trail of dripping water behind. He poked his head around the corner of the restrooms, spotting the familiar black and dark grays of security riot gear walking in the opposite direction. A jaunty little tune that cracked at the end went with him, the pitch too high.

Recognizing the buzz-cut immediately, Butch didn't hesitate before he followed, a smirk tugging at his mouth. "Yo, Stevie."

Stevie turned. "The fuck do you want?"

"Just sayin' hello. No need to get your panties in a twist."

He kept pace with Wally's brother, the man scowling at him. There was something about Stevie - always had been. The eldest Mack brother had a way of getting under his skin in ways Wally never had. And while they were both skilled at being annoying as fuck when they wanted to, it was something more visceral than that. It wasn't just that Stevie was the Overseer's lapdog. Or that he only fucked with people when he knew he wouldn't get caught. The reason didn't matter in the end, he supposed. Butch was good at gauging a dumpster fire waiting to happen. And one he could get started by just adding some lighter fluid was a real treat.

Another day in hell, he reminded himself, sneering when he spotted the wet stain on Stevie's pants. "Heh. Couldn't hold it anymore? Just like your old man, huh."

He stopped when Stevie did, waiting expectantly. He was nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet, weight distributed evenly. There was a fifty-fifty chance that Stevie wouldn't do anything, but he was ready either way. He felt wound up in ways only a good scuffle could fix.

Stevie glanced down and a smile twisted his face. "Don't worry about it, Butchie." The Tunnel Snake's eyes narrowed a fraction at the nickname, but he let it go when Stevie leaned in close, still yapping. It made it easy for Butch, his hand quick, Stevie doing most of the work. "Nothing a little time and punishment won't fix. But you'd know all about that, wouldn't you? You're no stranger to making people's lives miserable."

He moved back, smile fixed and Butch kept his expression light as he stuffed his hand into his jacket pocket, the weight of what he'd snatched from Stevie's belt settling there.

"I don't know, man. Your mom sure as hell ain't complainin'." His smirk grew when Stevie grabbed the collar of his vault suit. The challenge was there, restless and bleeding into his tone. "Touched a nerve, Mack?"

"Fuck you," Stevie swore, shoving him back against the wall. Butch bounced right back and kept pace with him again as he tried to walk away.

"Seriously, though," Butch continued, his grin cutting near the edges as he side-eyed Stevie. "Has she been asking for me?"

"Think you're funny, do you?"

"I've got my moments." Butch shrugged.

"You're a fucking joke, you know that? Talking shit about my mom. You don't even know half of what the department says about yours."

"And you're gonna tell me, right? So I can go break every asshole's nose after I crack yours."

Stevie laughed and Butch's fists clenched, but he remained still otherwise. Dumb. He'd been baited, but fuck it.

"Protective little shit, aren't you? But I can't fault you for that. A filthy alcoholic is the only woman who'll ever give a shit about you, so I get it. But I'm gonna have to draw the line somewhere."

Stevie reached into his vest pocket and Butch tensed as he pulled something halfway out. Getting tasered wasn't part of the plan, but he wouldn't put it past the asshat.

But a different type of tension took over when he saw the edge of black frames.

"I've seen how you've been looking at her, Butchie-boy," Stevie drawled, pushing the glasses back into the pocket. "So let me make something perfectly clear. I don't share. So I suggest you get a new punching bag."

Butch smiled again, smelling the greasy oil in the air, tasting the blood in the water. "Yeah, I ain't too sure about that. We've got history - years of it, I mean. Not sure you can compete there. I'd say I got first dibs."

Stevie's expression darkened, but his smile didn't dim. "I knew you were a fucking moron. Can't figure out why Wally wastes his time with you screw-ups, but I'll make this easy enough even you should be able to understand. Keep your greaser mitts away from the doc's kid. She's off limits, got it?"

"The fuck are you on about? I don't take orders from you."

"You wanna play ignorant? Fine. We'll keep it that way. " Stevie looked smug. He leaned in again and Butch's fists tightened. "Just keep your attention on the Princess, and we won't have any issues. Better yet, focus on the Gomez kid. He's getting too close for my taste."

Seemingly satisfied that they had an understanding, Stevie tapped his nose and turned. He continued whistling as he walked away.

Prick.

The glasses, though.

Fuck.

He turned and stalked down to the reactor level. When he didn't find her there, he locked up and took the stairs two at a time.

Something hadn't been right. He'd seen it earlier, even before she'd nearly cracked her skull. There'd been a clouded look to her eyes, not the razor she usually tried to cut him down with.

He followed the corridor Stevie had come from. Didn't see or hear anything out of the norm. He was about to turn and head to the diner to check the dinner crowd when a spark caught his eye. He got closer and found a supply closet with the door stuck, wiring stripped but tucked in to draw less attention.

He banged his fist on the door, leaning in. "Cohen?"

Nothing. His scalp tingled, fingers itching as he took a better look at the panel. Power had to be cut. He worked at loosening the case cover to get a better angle on the wiring. What had they used last time? Wire cutters and shrink tubing...

He pulled Stevie's Swiss army knife from his jacket pocket, searching for the little scissors. They'd been there the last time he'd borrowed it. Splicing wasn't the same as working on his Pip-boy or messing with the data his old man had left in the model Stanley had given him. But he'd watched Paulie do this a couple of times so it wasn't completely out of his range. He got caught up in the insulation covers colored in reds and browns and greens, cursing a couple of times when he heard and felt the buzz and pop of a wire touching what it shouldn't.

A few long minutes of fiddling with it and the door finally slid open, stuttering a bit in the middle but then picking up again to open entirely.

She almost fell out of the slowly moving doorway when the opening was big enough to get through. He saw it before she landed hard on him, stuttering and pushing herself off his chest. She reeled a few steps before crashing into the wall and trying to scramble away. He caught her around the waist before she hit the floor this time, skidding and struggling in his arms as he helped her stand.

"Cohen." She stiffened, stopped struggling and he thought he understood at that moment, his next words coming out lower, calmer. "I'm not Stevie."

"Butch?"

It was only when she stopped squirming that he felt how hard the shakes were. "Yeah. Yeah, just me."

She slumped suddenly and he took her dead weight when she crumpled, crouching with her. He ended up sitting with her forehead on his shoulder, face pressed in the leather. And he pocketed all the firsts that would make this awkward later. Her use of his name instead of DeLoria. The way they were sitting now, him nearly wrapped around her. The way she looked at him to confirm he wasn't lying, gray eyes gleaming strangely in the light. Not clouded anymore, but still not... Definitely not what he was used to.

She was taking great gulps of air in a way that was making him twitch and he patted her back awkwardly.

"We should get movin'."

"Gimme a minute," she huffed out against his jacket. "Just... gimme a minute."

He did, hearing her inhale and exhale, the sound still irregular enough that he wondered if she didn't remember how to do it anymore. He took a deep lungful, puffing his chest out before letting the breath out in a loud exhale. Did it again and kept doing it when he noticed she was trying to match her breathing to his. It was so different from what he was used to that he felt he had to say something. "You gotta admit it Cohen - you dig the fuckin' jacket."

She snorted, and it took him a full minute to realize it was a small laugh. The tension that had rooted in his chest since Stevie had shown him her glasses finally loosened.

Until he got a good look at her face.

His face tightened, fingers light as he touched her jaw to get a better look. "Asshole hit you pretty hard. It's bruised up already."

Her eyes flicked to his but quickly moved away and he felt a ripple of anger at the sight, straightening up quickly.

"Come on, you gotta get that looked at."

She looked ready to argue. But when she couldn't keep her balance and stumbled into the wall for the third time, she finally accepted his help.

"Concussion," she muttered, the word thick around her mouth. Her arm wound around his, her hand catching his tightly to keep her balance.

"Yeah, figured with all the puke. Probably doesn't help that you're blind as a bat, either."

When they got to the stairs and she nearly pitched right into them, he tightened his grip and pulled, her body colliding with his. It was going to be a long walk to the clinic.

His ears caught whistling and he frowned, turning to her. "Trust me?"

"What?"

"Trust me, yeah?"

Her brow raised, the doubt clear. He couldn't really say he blamed her. But then she gave a careful nod and he faltered as the floor shifted beneath him. He flashed her a cocky grin before he bent to haul her up.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, pushing against his chest feebly. No strength in her, but she was still fighting. He took the stairs as quickly as he dared.

"We need to get there _today_ , Cohen."

He climbed the two stairwells to reach the clinic before he set her on her feet in the hall outside when she thumped his chest the third time. But she reached out to him again to get herself through the door and into the nearest chair.

"Can you... can you please not say anything about this to them? Just... just say you found me passed out like this?"

She indicated who she meant with her eyes as Jonas noticed her from across the room. "James, you're going to want to see this."

Butch frowned at her guarded look, eyeing the marks on her jaw.

"Honey, what happened?"

"Tripped. It was stupid, but I hit my head pretty hard." Her eyes met Butch's again, over her dad's head. "Butch found me out cold."

"You were unconscious? After a head injury. Any idea how long you were out?"

"A couple of minutes, maybe."

James was writing things down and Butch realized they were still holding hands when she pulled hers free. He broke their stare to head towards the DeLoria part of the clinic.

It rubbed at him. The fucker was getting away with shit all over again. And he chafed under it.

But as he collapsed into the chair near his mom's bed while she peeked around the screen, he remembered what he'd just asked her. He'd asked her to trust him.

She said she did. And that was… that was something.

He sighed, slouching deeply in his seat.

It was really something.


	14. Chapter 14

Ellen placed her cards face down on the table. "Check."

He glanced at his own, pointless as it was. "Check."

"Raise you." Ellen flicked a folded piece of paper towards the center of the table and he groaned, tossing his cards in.

"What's that - three wins in a row already?"

Ellen's mouth curved, reaching for the scraps of paper sitting between them. She flattened them out, eyeing the scribbles on each as she did. "You're going to be scrubbing floors for a month at this rate, Butchie."

"Yeah yeah." He picked up the cards, stacked them into a semi-neat pile to shuffle. Cast a surreptitious look towards the office. They'd been holed up for a while now.

"What'd you do to her, Butchie?"

His eyes flew to his mom, brow rising. "Seriously?"

"You brought her in all bruised up." Her smile had faded, a more piercing look taking over. "I didn't raise you like that."

"Wasn't me." Butch continued shuffling, eyes flashing at her tone. "I didn't touch her."

Her eyes were shrewd as she took a sip from her plastic cup. "You were holding hands."

Butch finished dealing, giving her a look as he took his cards. "It ain't what you think."

"It's not what they'll think, either. All they're gonna focus on is her face."

"They'll think what they wanna think anyway." Butch shrugged. "Always do."

Ellen didn't respond and they resumed their game in silence, Butch trying to concentrate on his cards.

* * *

"The good news is that it's not a fracture."

James pressed an ice pack to her throbbing jaw, directing her hand over it to keep it in place. All his considerable focus was centered on her, eyes on the purples and rust-reds marring her skin. The nails of her free hand dug into her palm under the scrutiny, leaving crescent imprints on the line crossing the middle. Her Fate Line, Beatrice had called it when she traced it with a thin finger. Shallow and narrow and Mae had already forgotten what that meant, busy as she was fighting the many things twisting inside her. Like the urge to shove her dad as he stood too close.

"The concussion is another matter. We'll have to keep you here under observation."

Fantastic. "For how long?"

It came out as a croak and she cleared her throat, turning to Jonas. But he was too far for her to make out details. His stance said enough, though. He'd remained quiet around her but had managed a couple of sidebars with her dad and she remained wary of them.

James hesitated. His shift had to be close to eighteen hours now and the exhaustion bled through, his tone rough with it. "Honey, did Butch do this? Has he been bullying you again?"

"What?" She lowered the ice pack, her voice low but sharp. "I fell. Hard. I told you."

"Are you certain?"

She hardened, a small lick of anger spreading in her core. "You told me to handle my bullies. To learn to fend for myself. Remember?"

"What happened to your glasses?"

She wanted to rub her eyes harshly. To wipe the image away, _of hands on a body he shouldn't be touching, lips a degradation on her, and it was so_ wrong _-_

The small trace of anger molted, growing into its second skin, and her nails dug deeper.

Pressing the ice pack back on her jaw with forced calm, she finally looked him in the eye. "I didn't have them when I woke up."

James sighed deeply, seeming to shrink when he exhaled. "You'll be on bed rest until further notice. You need it for your head to get better and we'll keep an eye on your symptoms. That means no school tomorrow. I will let Mr. Brotch know. We can't spare stimpaks with the current restrictions, but I can give you some Med-X after you eat."

So close to Ellen? "Pass."

There was no way she wanted anything else that'd make her loopy.

He nodded, stepping back to scribble rapidly on her chart. "No homework tonight, nothing complicated. Just get some rest, kiddo."

His tone was clipped as he walked out of the office, her file still in his hand. It didn't bode well.

Jonas sighed, coming to rest a hand on her shoulder. It was heavy but she remained still. "Remember that you have us in your corner. We care about you. We worry."

As fruitless as it was to interpret her dad, Jonas was the opposite. He meant well. But as Jonas followed after her dad, starting another hushed conversation in the main area of the clinic, she shrunk from them. She preferred to be alone. She wanted to hide, to wait in the dark until all of this went away. Until she could wrap herself around the hovering fear threatening to choke her. Until she could regain some control.

And what did that say about her, that she kept wanting to flee to the dark places? That her primary urge was to return to that, after what had just happened?

She stood, trudging over to the empty gurney against the wall near Ellen's. Mae was able to keep her balance already, her reflexes had been checked. They couldn't keep her too long if the concussion symptoms didn't return.

Finishing his conversation with Jonas, her dad approached the DeLorias and she changed direction quickly.

"Butch, if I could have a word?"

She knocked into their table with her hip, their cards scattering before her dad got another word in.

Butch's eyes strayed to her, pinning her, and she was able to make out the startling blue of them even with her shitty eyesight. By some miracle, he was receptive to what she was trying to tell him and he shot her dad one of his easy grins, the sort that could hook someone if they didn't know him.

"No can do, doc." Butch backed towards the exit, not turning his back on them. "I get it. Your kid's a klutz, you're ready to hand me a medal for finding her."

"That's not…"

"Say no more, doc. Let's shelve this conversation, let the kid rest?"

He made it to the doorway before he turned and sauntered out, his grin full of... something when he looked her way. She couldn't identify what, but her heart thudded faster as it hit her.

And the look on her dad's face was enough for her, at the moment. He wasn't getting what he wanted so she walked back to her area, lying on the gurney, resigned to wasting a few hours under Jonas' watch.

She let the question of Butch's grin occupy her mind for a brief moment while her dad huffed and Ellen asked Jonas to top her off, pointing out he had already fallen three minutes behind on her beer schedule. She held onto his grin as long as she could.

But she soon turned her back on the clinic, wishing with every particle of her being to not think for once. To not remember.

Because she had gotten so good at not remembering.

And now that she was, she couldn't shake it off and continue pretending anymore.

* * *

When the only sounds were Ellen flipping her cards and Jonas typing idly at the terminal for two hours straight, she finally sat up.

"Jonas, I need a shower."

"It's after hours." He didn't glance away from the screen.

"I need to shower. I can't go to sleep without one. I'll be quick, five minutes tops." She bit her lip.

"I'll go with her."

They both turned to Ellen. Jonas spoke before she did. "It's still after hours."

"Not for the maintenance crew."

Mae wasn't sure, but she could almost see Ellen's crooked smile.

"We'll be quick. Not five minutes quick, more like twenty to use the bathtubs. Takes about three minutes alone to fill them."

Mae's eyes flew to Jonas. He was leaning forward, curious as she was. "The ones on the Atrium level?"

Ellen nodded, leaning forward, too. "I have the key. We just need to, you know, _not_ announce ourselves and we'll be fine."

Mae checked her Pip-boy for the time. It was close to 2300 hours and a patrol was on that level. But it was probably Officer Kendall and he tended to nap at his post. She'd wandered past him enough times to know.

She watched Jonas with held breath. She needed a shower, she hadn't been lying. To wash this entire day off. To maybe stop going mad stewing within her own thoughts.

"Fine, but we'll _all_ go."

Jonas stood and Mae kicked her sheets off eagerly. Ellen's mouth twitched, her smile definitely there, and in that moment, Mae could see where Butch got some of that charm from.

They walked side by side by side, Mae a little bummed that she didn't have a spare set of clothes to change into. They made it to the Atrium level with no trouble and Mae stepped into the bathing room that sat the furthest distance from the living quarters.

"I'll wait for you two here." Jonas waved from the bench he settled himself on in the locker area, a book in hand.

"Your loss." Ellen reached into the cabinets to grab towels and soap for them. She even took a couple of bottles out and handed them to Mae as she led her to the bathing room.

Mae watched transfixed as the tubs filled.

"Go on, check the temperature." Ellen nudged her with a bare shoulder, her towel - white and fluffy and clearly only used on this level - already wrapped around her. "I like it pretty hot, but that's just my taste."

Mae reached her hand in, felt the heat. She turned the tap, trying to make it hotter, steam rising. She dipped a finger into the water again, wanting it scalding when she felt a nudge on her shoulder.

Ellen pressed a bar of soap into her hand and pointed towards the enclosures at the other end of the tubs. "You wanna wash off, do it over there." Her tone was brusque, the way it always was. Ellen didn't seem like a woman who had much softness to her. But there was something in her eyes. "Come back to the tub when you want to relax, let the tension out."

Mae shut down at the look. She couldn't face the understanding.

She went to the shower and scrubbed herself thoroughly. Then she did it twice more, using the sweetly scented body wash that was in the shower stall on the last scrub. When she got out, she wrapped herself up in three of the towels, until only her head peaked out before she went to sit by the tubs.

Ellen was immersed to her shoulders, her hair dry and still retaining its wave. Mae studied her as the woman sat there, eyes closed.

"Was your wedding song your favorite on the tape?" she finally asked.

"I've never had just one favorite song. So long as it had a rhythm, I listened. I hadn't heard a lot of these in a long time. They don't get played anymore. The Overseer's taste is more important than the rest of ours." Ellen smiled, a tilt on one side of her mouth only, almost a smirk. "But Peggy Lee was good for any mood. "Fever", one was called. I used to croon it to Butchie's dad. That fucker always knew how handsome he was."

Mae smiled underneath her cover of the fluffy towel, at the use of profanity. The memory eased some of the edges out of Ellen. She wanted to continue their conversation, Ellen's previous slip of information prompting her. "You two got paired up through the lottery?"

Ellen shook her head, sinking deeper into the tub. "He never liked following what others planned for him. None of us do. But he did what he wanted, with who he wanted, and he did it more than most. He was always trouble." She chuckled softly. "And in the end, he wanted me."

"Where did he take you on your first date?" Mae was honestly curious. She couldn't remember talking to Ellen. Ever. "Dinner at the Diner?"

Ellen's smile was definitely a smirk now. "The Diner," she conceded. "But he rented the whole place out. Just me and him and the jukebox. He told me to wear my dancing shoes, so I did."

"He danced?" Mae was fascinated. The only men she had seen that could dance were in the holofilms.

"He tried. He knew some swing, but mama taught me soon as I could walk, and I had my pop to practice with. I was the best and every cat in the vault knew it."

Pride tinted Ellen's tone, and Mae reached for the bottles she had left next to her. Ellen shook her head when Mae lifted the bottle in question.

"Nope, those are for you. Come on, your turn."

The woman pulled herself out and Mae averted her eyes from the yellow-green on her arms, the thin droop of her shoulders and the softness of her belly. Mae sank into her own tub, hissing at the temperature, and Ellen began lathering her up as soon as she was in, hands firm but gentle. She dug her fingers in through her thick hair, getting right into her skull and Mae felt her shoulders loosen under the sure touch.

"You need moisturizing shampoo for your hair," Ellen said quietly. "I used to have an oil I'd use on mine before I cut it. Would probably work for your hair, too. You shouldn't wash it so often. Messes with the curl."

"Hmm."

"Now rinse this off and we can condition."

Mae sank into the tub obediently, submerging her head completely and rubbing the suds out of her hair.

She emerged and Ellen began applying conditioner, starting at the tips and moving up the length of her hair. She stopped near the scalp, gathered it all together and piled it on top of her head with a clip. "Now relax for a few minutes and then we can wash it out and let Jonas take his nap in his usual chair at the clinic."

"He sleeps on his shift?"

"Tries to pretend not to. Up until he snores himself awake."

Mae's smile was wide and it caught her completely by surprise, the sharp throb of pain from her jaw reminding her. But she hugged the distraction close again. She would put this memory in the small little box she retained them, all the good things that kept her sane.

Ellen washed the conditioner off and then they both dried and dressed in silence.

"So… how were you and Mr. Ellen DeLoria able to get out of the lottery?" Mae asked, a nervous energy filling her. To somehow spit on the Overseer's decisions and get away with it…

"Easy." Ellen smiled, her smile equal parts delighted and cold. "I got pregnant. Even the Overseer couldn't get in the way of that."

"Yeah. Makes sense."

But Mae deflated at the answer. That would never work for her. Not with what she wanted.

They made their way back to the clinic in companionable silence, Mae smelling of the shampoo and conditioner she usually smelled on Amata.

"There you are. Fuck. What if I had an emergency?"

Butch was scowling as he stood from where he'd been crouched by the door.

"It's after hours," Jonas muttered, unlocking the door and returning to his desk. But Jonas didn't kick him out, and Butch soon joined Ellen at her card table, the both of them clearly not ready to sleep.

Mae went to the small fridge, removing a new ice pack before she returned to her bed to lay on her back. She listened to the low murmurs between Butch and Ellen, the quiet shuffle of their card game as she stared at the ceiling.

And after a long while, she heard one of Jonas' snores break through the quiet atmosphere, and she couldn't stop the small snort of laughter that escaped her.

She chanced a glance at Ellen and saw the curve on the woman's mouth.

"You might as well join us, kid."

Mae sat up and directed a look at Butch, but it wasn't hostile. Not when she saw the way he'd moved the spare chair out for her. Not when she got closer, and finally recognized what was in his smile. It was bright, easy and disarming, and for once not holding the usual bad blood that made it mean.

She sat gingerly and they dealt her in. And she found she couldn't stop her eyes from seeking him out, furtively searching for that smile to be directed at her again.


	15. Chapter 15

Amata's eyes were one of Mae's favorite features. They were luminous, with thick lashes she curled and dabbed with mascara, and they shifted between a warm honey to a mottled green that bordered on black depending on her mood.

They were inky as she focused on Mae's face that morning, two steaming mugs sitting forgotten on the table next to them.

"Do you want to talk?" she finally asked softly.

Mae fiddled with the edge of the blanket she was loosely wrapped in. She glanced at Ellen, who had her back to the rest of the clinic, sleeping fitfully.

As if reading her mind, Amata moved closer, sitting next to Mae on the small cot and accepting the bit of blanket Mae offered.

"What happened?" she whispered once they were settled in.

Mae grabbed one of the mugs, taking a careful sip. "I should've been more careful."

Amata's eyes dimmed in sudden understanding, and Mae was tempted to backtrack from that alone.

"He did this." It wasn't phrased as a question. There was no need to even clarify 'who'. But at Mae's nod, Amata took her hand, her voice low but tinged with urgency. "Look, I know you hoped this had finally stopped, that he'd finally left you alone after he started his internship with security. But he hasn't. And he won't."

Mae stared into her mug, a mix of anger and fear in the pit of her stomach.

"You need to tell someone."

"Amata…"

"He shouldn't be able to terrorize you like this."

Mae didn't say anything further. She wrapped both hands around her mug, hoping they wouldn't give her away. Being a Mack and part of Vault security we're already bad enough. But being one of the few that reported to the Overseer directly… Amata didn't even know the worst of it.

Her throat tight, she counted to twenty, and when that wasn't sufficient, she took to counting in powers of three.

Amata stared at her for a long while and finally sighed, changing tactics.

"What do you need me to do?" she murmured.

"For now?" At Amata's nod, Mae took a deep breath. "I need you to try to keep Freddie from seeing... well…" she gestured to herself vaguely. "This. Me."

"But… He's…" Amata hesitated. "He'll want to see you. Are you sure?"

She was. A weight had settled deep within Mae, leached into her marrow. She wasn't scared of Amata seeing her at her lowest (never that). No, what she feared was how familiar it all felt. How crippling it could become. She was terrified that if she gave an inch— if she let the despair claw and burrow deeper—

"I can't talk about it, 'Mata. I _can't._ I…" Mae trailed off. She wiped her cheek and nose hurriedly when Amata wrapped an arm around her and pressed close. She turned to her mug and began downing the coffee, not even wincing when the ceramic met her teeth too hard.

"Okay. Whatever you need. I'll do my best."

"I know you will." Mae's faith in Amata was resolute.

"You don't have to do this alone, either."

Mae's chest tightened at those words. She breathed around the vise constricting her ribs, trying not to dwell on how she was putting her trust somewhere new. Somewhere untested, unproven.

But she forced herself to relax inch by inch until she was able to cover all the cracks she had exposed. She gave Amata a determined look. "It won't be like last time."

Things weren't the same; _she_ wasn't the same.

No. This time, she wouldn't lose.

Amata didn't argue further, grabbing her own mug and sipping it slowly. They sat in silence for a while, shoulders and arms and hips pressed together as the muted sounds of the vault waking up reached them.

Mae stared at Ellen's sleeping form a long moment before finally speaking up. "One last thing, 'Mata?"

"Shoot."

"Can you make me some new mixtapes?"

"Sure." She turned a bit, her eyes softening. "Any requests in particular?"

Mae nearly smiled. "Anything you can swing to."

* * *

Butch dozed.

Caught somewhere between a memory and a dream, he let himself get pulled under without protest when he felt the soft press of a body against his, arms latching around his neck. It was familiar, the fit of the body and the way the dream began, and when his mouth met hers, it was warm and inviting and sweeter than he remembered. She tasted like something he recognized but couldn't name and Butch took his time as he focused on her mouth, a hand going to the nape of her neck, tilting her head and pulling her closer. He could drown in her, his lips traveling along her jawline, dimly realizing he should probably be more careful around this area before his mouth found her pulse point and sucked, a rush of heat coiling as a moan escaped her—

"Butch!"

He jerked awake, head slipping from the hand that was supporting it and nearly hitting the table.

"What?" His heart raced, eyes darting around his surroundings. "What the fuck—"

"Shut it," Christine muttered, looking annoyed as she dropped into the seat next to him. It was her default expression and it made her look just her mom. "You're gonna get us kicked out."

"Whaddya want?" he grunted, blinking in the fluorescent lighting. The Library. No fucking wonder he'd passed out.

Christine studied him in that indirect way of hers, pretending to be looking at anything else. Butch gave her a moment, used to it and her hesitancy. Christine only spoke up when she had something to say; otherwise, she kept to the background noise while Susie dominated the stage.

"What's going on with them?" she finally asked with a pointed look towards the stacks.

Butch exhaled noisily, scrubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "I couldn't give two shits, Christine."

"Just look," she hissed.

He rolled his eyes but turned his head nonetheless. "At what?"

" _That."_

It took him a minute. But he blinked once he saw what she meant. "Where's Wally?"

"He left as soon as Paul told him they were done for today. Said he had things to take care of."

"Heh. Don't think he'd wanna see this anyway," Butch said with a snicker as he watched the scene unfold. Susie had cornered Freddie by one of the shelves, standing close enough to step on his shoes while Paul kept Amata in deep conversation at the table where their things were spread. "Not sure which one of 'em is making the bigger mistake."

Christine made a disgruntled noise and Butch turned to her, sharp grin in place. "What? 'Fraid your girl's gonna drop you now that she has a new chew toy?"

"She's not 'my girl', you chauvinist."

He smirked knowingly. "Does Susie know that?"

"I don't even know why I bother with you sometimes," she said with a long-suffering sigh.

"Wally won't understand and Paulie's got a big mouth," Butch reminded smugly. "Your exact words, right?"

He counted it a victory when she grabbed her magazine and pretended to be absorbed in it instead of arguing.

"Where's the ice-queen anyway?"

He shrugged dismissively, leaning back in his seat. He wondered if she'd be awake right now. He'd slept like shit on the chair in the clinic, but each time he'd woken to adjust he'd found her awake. Wandering around in her socks silently, rearranging things on the counters or drawing on the whiteboard. By the time the doc had shown up in the morning, he'd found one half of the whiteboard covered in a thick tangle of berries and leaves and vines, all carefully detailed and unique. The berries were done in red, the leaves and vines left colorless. There'd been a lot more vines, but the red stood out among them, bright and vivid, smudged and streaked.

There were times when she'd stare at nothing for long minutes, when he was sure she hadn't even noticed him awake with her.

He yawned widely, his jaw cracking. "You gonna be okay if I go?"

Christine shrugged, but she smirked at him. "I'm always okay. You know that."

"What was I thinking." Butch grinned, standing with his lone notebook. "Later Kendall."

"Don't forget you told Monica you were coming by for dinner, you jerk."

"Shit, I did say that, didn't I? Didn't think seven-year-olds had such good memories." He backpedaled, a frown forming. "When's your pop working?"

"He works every night."

"Yeah, that wasn't the story last week, remember."

Christine pursed her lips. "It won't be a repeat. He knows Monica's been asking about you."

"And I'm sure he loves that shit," Butch muttered, but Christine smiled. It was one of her rare ones, without the jadedness she usually reserved for most things.

"Monica's the baby and what Monica wants, Monica gets." Christine's affection shone through, and Butch understood. Monica was spoiled, but she was one of the few kids in the vault. It was hard not to dote on her, he found. Even he was surprised how much he liked the little brat.

"Alright. Tell her if she ain't too busy with her doctor visit, I'll come by tonight."

"Yeah, whatever," she said before leveling him with a dangerous glint in her eyes. "Just don't let her down, or it will be my personal mission to make your life a living hell."

He lifted his hands defensively, backing off. "Lighten up, Kendall. I'll see you later."

He left before she could threaten him more. She could get frighteningly creative when she wanted.

The clinic was quiet when he arrived, Blue Velvet playing in the background. He nearly rolled his eyes at the song but stopped himself when he spotted his ma staring at her nails when he peeked around the screen. "Yo."

"That is _not_ how you're going to greet me," she said, brow arching as he leaned in, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. She nodded at him as he stepped back. "Better."

"What's your day been like?"

"Tedious," she replied flatly. "But the company isn't so bad."

He didn't get to ask more, the doc's voice reaching them.

"Butch, a word please."

He turned his head, focusing on the shorter presence that had stopped beside him before heeding the doc.

"Cohen."

"Butch." She wasn't going back to his last name, then. Good. She looked like shit though, the circles under her eyes almost as bad as the bruising on the lower half of her face. His brow furrowed, something in the smooth line of her jaw tickling the back of his mind, but she moved away before he could pinpoint whatever it was, taking a seat at the table, their heads bending together and blocking him out.

He followed the doc back to his office.

"Have a seat."

Butch dropped into the chair, legs stretched before him. The bobblehead bounced on the desk, but his eyes went to the doc, chin rising as James frowned at him. Neither of them looking away, the doc finally cleared his throat before he began speaking.

"Your mother is doing remarkably well so far."

"She is?" Caught off guard, the relief made him sag, bravado dropped for a brief second. "That's fucking amazing."

"Indeed. Her enzymes, while still high, are improving even with just a few days of adjusting her consumption." He looked pleased, his face losing some of its seriousness as he continued,"Now, I need you to understand that this doesn't mean she's out of harm's way. If anything, things will only get harder from here. As her closest and only next of kin, I need to update you on a couple of changes we will be implementing." He paused, frowning at his desk before he continued. "Due to recent… events, we've decided it is best to have your mother's care strictly in the hands of Jonas and myself. We will be removing my daughter from the rotation schedule and Ellen will remain under our responsibility for the duration of her stay."

Butch stared, momentarily speechless.

"It's the best course for all parties," the doc continued, responding to a question that hadn't been asked. "You're still welcome to come by as you'd like, as long as your presence doesn't interfere with her _restful_ recovery." Here, he threw Butch a sharp look, clearly still remembering how he'd found him in the clinic that morning. "We will need to discuss what will happen once we remove her from the taper schedule and she goes back home."

Butch nodded. It was good news. Altogether good news. So why...?

"She still has a few days before she'll be ready for that so we can prepare in the meantime. But I wanted you to be aware. She will need a strong support system at home. And so will you."

"Sure, doc, let me know when and where. Just, level with me a sec." He glanced towards the clinic, thoughts splintered. "Does she know?"

James sighed. "Your mother knows. I'll be talking to my daughter later today."

The doc dismissed him and Butch stood slowly, in no hurry to return to the others. Watching Cohen bent over his ma's calloused hands, he wondered about the sinking feeling in his gut.

They both turned as he neared, but he kept his eyes on his ma when she spoke up.

"Can you get something for me?"

"Yeah." He focused on the ointment being spread in a generous layer on her dry palms. Cohen's gaze on him was like a live current, pulling at him.

"Bring me the small bag I have in my bottom drawer."

He nodded at the floor. "Sure. I might be running late tonight, but yeah, I'll bring it."

"You didn't mention plans." Her voice sharpened, a tightness in her eyes, in the corners of her mouth. "Why? Is it a date?"

"No." Those gray eyes of hers burned into him, but he kept his on a pair of familiar blue - hard and pretty as the glass jewelry collecting dust in her dresser.

"Then what is it?"

He scowled, feeling his face heat. "Just... plans."

"With who?"

"Kendall," he growled, hackles rising. This line of questioning needled him, only made worse by her choice to do it with an audience. "Anything else you dyin' to know? Now that you suddenly give a fuck."

Cohen's gaze moved away from him and he felt the loss as surely as his ma's disappointment in him spiked. He felt his temper spilling over.

"I'm outta here," he muttered, not meeting their eyes as he turned and stalked out. He needed to move, smoke a cigarette, _something._ Frustrated and already regretting how he'd left things, he rubbed a hand over his face and made his way out of the clinic.

"Wait."

He slowed to a stop, turning to watch as Cohen followed. "I don't need a lecture."

"And I'm not your mom, dickhead. Thank Christ."

He snickered despite himself, a familiarity settling between them. "Why'd you follow me, then?"

She hesitated, eyes darting around the hallway with something like fear. "I need to check on something at home. If you walk with me, you can get what your mom asked for and I can bring it back with me." She gave him a stony look as her eyes met his eyes finally. "No need to interfere with your _plans."_

He studied her for a moment, brow furrowed. "You talk to the doc about this?"

She shrugged. "As much as we talk about anything."

"And he's okay with it?"

She shrugged again, but there was a stubbornness in the set of her mouth, her jaw. He felt that confusion again, a heat slowly spreading within him as he watched her.

The school bell rung, signaling the end of class and the few students that had remained with Brotch for free period began spilling out into the hall behind her.

He frowned over her head as he recognized the flat-top haircut of one of the students. "Is that Wally?"

Her eyes widened as she turned, horror spreading across her features. "Shit."

"Come on," he urged, grabbing her arm and leading her in the opposite direction but she pulled back.

"That's the wrong way."

"You'd rather walk around Wally?"

She cursed under her breath but let him drag her. The door shut behind them and he climbed the steps until he got to the landing, stopping before opening the door leading to the atrium.

"Why'd you stop?"

"Cuz Wally ain't gonna stop in this hallway if he sees me here."

"Why?"

He smirked, pulling her closer with a tug on the arm. "Just trust me."

He felt a rush when she didn't argue. She merely eyed him warily as he pulled her even closer. Until he could feel her warm exhale on his collar, the slight tremble in her frame. She didn't protest when he turned both their bodies, so her back was against the wall and he was leaning into her, invading her personal space.

"Trust me," he repeated, but there was a plea there, an undercurrent of desperation. He needed her to agree.

The door opened at the bottom of the stairwell and her eyes flew to him, the question obvious. They both heard someone climbing up, moving closer.

"Trust me," he whispered again, and she finally nodded hurriedly, her breath coming in shorter gasps as whoever it was came within hearing distance.

He didn't question it further, didn't question his reasoning, or his sanity. He merely blocked her body from view against the wall, leaned in until they were breathing the same air, and met her mouth with his as gently as he could.

Recognition hit like a bolt of lightning and he nearly groaned as his half-forgotten dream came back in a rush that made him dizzy.

Someone coughed pointedly behind them, but Butch couldn't move away and soon he heard the person leaving, muttering, 'get a room' before they left, the sound of the door swishing closed the last thing he heard.

Before Cohen shoved him off with a strength he never expected.

She was shaking, her eyes livid as she stared at him in disbelief. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, before finally shaking her head several times.

He stared after her in shock as she finally punched the button to open the door and disappeared into the atrium level without him.


	16. Chapter 16

Mae fumed.

The door opened with a hiss of air behind her, but she couldn't hear much above the roaring in her own ears. She took the long way to her apartment, through the atrium level.

He caught up to her quickly, and she stopped when he moved to block her.

She was incandescent. " _Move."_

"Wait, you gotta-"

"No!" She shoved past him. Fury had taken over and the pain in her chest only fueled it.

"I was just trying-"

"What you can do is leave me the fuck alone," she growled.

"We gotta talk about this-"

He grabbed her arm as she was rounding a corner and she reacted. Hands clenched, she swung and drove a fist into his gut. He released her, doubling over with a strained gasp.

She straightened and spoke harshly. "If talking was what you wanted, you should've started there. Not with-"

She couldn't even finish the sentence, stalking off again.

He was stubborn. Like a leech, he tagged along, trying to regain his voice and his footing at the same time. He managed to right himself by the next bend, and he stopped her again. A hand on her shoulder this time, but he was quick to remove it when she whirled on him.

His eyes, normally bright with an ease she wished she could emulate, bore into her.

"Just give me a sec. Please."

And she's never heard him ask. The plea tumbled in her head, but she couldn't believe him. It hurt to look at him, like the vise had edges that cut as it tightened around her. Her trust lay in tatters on the floor and for one hot second she hated him.

"I need you to give me some space," she said hollowly.

"I'm sorry."

She nailed him with a look.

"I should've warned you. I shouldn't have… I'm sorry," he repeated. "I didn't… I mean, I _did,_ but I didn't mean for it…" He trailed off as he looked at her, eyes tormented by whatever he saw. "We can't just leave it like this."

She felt as sharp as the edges within her were, cutting and jagged. "I can't do this."

Someone was walking in the halls ahead of them. Pulling the collar of her jumpsuit up as high as it would go, she turned her face away from whoever was coming.

"Uh...?"

"Gomez," Butch announced. It was a low growl. A tone meant to translate into 'fuck off'.

Freddie either ignored it or was oblivious. "What's going on?"

She practically vibrated under Butch's gaze. "I can't do this right now," she whispered.

He looked torn as she walked over to a confused Freddie.

"Are you okay?" Freddie looked sick as she neared. "Amata didn't tell me the extent…"

"Walk me home, yeah?"

Freddie nodded, shooting looks behind her several times.

She couldn't glance back once.

* * *

It was the most uncomfortable walk she could remember. Freddie wouldn't stop staring and it was making her fidgety. She was relieved when he finally spoke.

"Was Butch the one who…?"

"No."

"Mae, what happened?"

"I got a concussion."

"Okay." He paused. "How?"

She let out a deep breath. "It was me against a wall. I lost."

"Seriously."

"I don't want to talk about it."

The silence stretched between them as they finally made it through the last hallway and took the stairwell down to the lower level.

"So… what was that with Butch?"

"Project stuff."

"He's been hanging around a lot for all the project stuff you're doing by yourself."

She grunted, unlocking her apartment and making a beeline for her bedroom.

"You know, it's probably best you don't count on him anyway," Freddie said as he watched from her doorway, leaning against it with his hands in his pockets. "Paul told me he just saw him necking with someone in the stairwell, said I should go the long way."

She focused on her task, on the planters in her room, checking the lamps and watering each the amounts she had already assigned. She couldn't think about what he was saying.

"Not sure who it was this time, but it can't leave him much free time, right? Can't imagine he's pulling his weight much here."

She took detailed notes on each planter. Felt her vision go blurrier than usual.

"You didn't see who it was, did you?" He continued watching her.

She blinked several times. "No."

She emptied out one of her bags and filled it with a few things to take with her. Some spare towels, a sponge, soap and water bottles went in too.

"Mae," he said as she flitted around her apartment. He moved closer and she backed away, sidestepping around him. He looked hurt.

"I'm sorry. I just… I'm not in the best state right now…"

"It's okay."

"I didn't want you to see me like this," she confessed, finally facing him fully.

"Why?" He kept his hands in his pockets, face pale as he watched her. A tightness was in his shoulders, his eyes dark with something that was so painfully familiar, she couldn't look away. "What are you scared I'm gonna see?"

Everything she was. All of her faults and weaknesses. Her cracks and fissures. Weak, broken, unfixable...

"What do you _want_ me to see?" he asked more quietly.

"About me?" He nodded, face uncertain. And this was the worst possible timing.

He had already seen everything. Her fears circled like birds of prey. But his expression is what finally drove her to respond. He looked as exposed as she felt and something close to understanding made her answer as honestly as she could.

Mae swallowed. "I… I want you to think of me as a friend. Someone who cares for you, who wants nothing but your happiness. That no matter what, I'll always be here for you."

She saw it; the moment her words registered. When he understood. He looked away, turning towards the floor, face flushed. But she couldn't say more. It would be insincere, and he deserved better than that.

"Is that… is that all? A friend?" he whispered.

A month ago? No. But right now?

"Yes."

It was all that she could manage.

He nodded carefully. "It's not… not just me?"

He eyes widened. "No. Fred, I… It's not _you._ Any girl would be lucky to have you." She bit her tongue, wondering how far she should go. But taking one look at him, she plowed onward. "I don't think I ever told you this, but I had a _huge_ crush on you when I was ten."

His mouth quirked. "What?"

She reddened under his bemused stare. "Yeah."

He laughed a little, and it made her relax a smidge. But the light mood didn't last. His expression became drawn, uncertain again in the blink of an eye.

"I know what you mean. About not wanting others to see you. I, uh… I was just heading to see your dad. Wanted to talk to him about finally making some appointments."

"Oh, yeah?"

He nodded, looking something closer to normal. "It might help."

"Yeah."

He smiled a little.

She pulled the bag onto her shoulders. "I'll walk with you halfway to the clinic."

"Okay."

The door swished open but Freddie stopped her before she took a step. He bent and picked something up from the ground.

"What's this?"

He handed her a small bag, faded and soft from several washes. The DeLoria name in red thread was near the bottom corner, done in a crooked set of stitches that was slowly coming undone. She stared at it for a long moment, the vise in her chest squeezing.

"Come on," she finally rasped, leading the way to the range. She stopped at the stairwell, turning to Freddie. "Can you give this to Ellen DeLoria? She'll be in the clinic."

"Okay." He took it gingerly. "Tell her it's from you?"

"No. From Butch."

His expression darkened at that. But he nodded eventually.

"I'll see you later," she assured.

"Okay." He touched her face gently, his eyes still looking at her with a mix of want and confusion. She could see it clearly now - how had she missed it before?

Some of the tension in her shoulders remained as she watched him walk away.

But looking at the supplies in her hands, she sighed. One problem at a time.

She unlocked the range and got to work on cleaning it up.

* * *

She stayed only as long as she needed to clean up the mess she'd made. When she locked up behind her, she kept her ears sharp and relied on her hearing to help where her eyes were lacking. She was used to walking the halls at this hour, but she was more paranoid than usual.

She made it to the clinic just as her father looked ready to walk out. "There you are. I need to talk to you before I leave." He glanced out into the hallway behind her. "Where is… ah, there he is. Glad to see Butch kept his end of your agreement."

She turned but wasn't able to see anything. If he had kept up with her, he had remained out of sight.

"Never too far behind, is he?" Freddie said as he stood in the doorway. "He's like your shadow."

She wasn't sure what to say to that. "Dad, you wanted to talk?"

"Yes, let's go to my office. Freddie, we shall be in contact."

Freddie attempted a smile as he sauntered out. As she followed her dad into his office, she was hopeful.

She settled into the empty seat, flicking the bobblehead and watching it bounce. "When am I getting my glasses?"

"Tomorrow." He didn't check his chart, merely sat and pinched the bridge of his nose.

She frowned, sitting up in her seat. "What is it?"

"Mae, we have to talk about your clinic duties." He finally lowered his hand with a sigh, giving her his full attention. "We are going to be cutting your hours."

"Because of this?" Her heart pounded loudly, echoing in her ears. "Okay. But I'm better. I'm sure I'll be okay to go after one more day here, right? I can go back to my regular duties then."

"It is not just because of your current stay. We're removing you from the rotation schedule. And instead of five days, we'll cut you back to two."

It was a slug to her stomach. "Why?"

"Honey, you are not doing well. You are not sleeping, you've skipped your medication today, don't think I didn't notice. We can't let you go home on your own yet, let alone be responsible of others."

"Dad, no. _Please_ don't do this."

"I'm sorry, honey. I know how much it means to you, but your health comes first. We don't want you overwhelmed with everything you've got going."

Her eyes couldn't focus. But there was no arguing. Not with him.

"Anything else?"

"No. Get some rest, honey. Please."

She stood, moving mechanically.

"Mae?"

She paused.

"We can't help you unless you let us. You have to want to get better."

She stumbled out. She didn't remember getting to her cot, only collapsing into it. With her face buried in her pillow, she finally let go. She clenched her hands in it, shutting out everything around her. Feeling all of her failures close over her, despair and fatigue finally won and pulled her under. She had no energy to fight anymore today.

* * *

She awoke to quiet murmurs and a soft chortle.

Mae kept her eyes closed, listening to Butch and Ellen. He must've apologized. She must've forgiven him. Things were back to normal. A love that was unquestionable rested between them, a loyalty even when they could both be so horrible to each other.

She slept again, a deep sleep. If it was plagued by dreams, good or bad, she was not able to remember them.

* * *

It was past ten when she finally woke up properly.

A tray of tea and toast sat behind her, the stiff peaks of margarine the only part of breakfast that was still the same as it was three hours ago. Everything else had turned cold and stale.

She ate, guzzling tea to wash down the dry toast. She stood and stretched the way she'd done on her days with the team, counting out the seconds and breathing carefully through each stretch. It helped keep her alert after such a heavy sleep.

She heard Ellen before she saw her, ejecting one holotape from her Pip-boy and reaching for another from the small stack on the table before her.

"What have you got there?" Mae wondered quietly. Ellen looked up with something close to guilt.

"I didn't think you'd mind," she said with a small shrug. She closed the tape deck and pressed play and Allan Gray's Swing Doors opened with a trumpet flare that made Mae's feet twitch.

She sat down across from her, picking up another holotape. "Did Amata drop these off?"

"About an hour ago. You slept through the first one I played."

She put the holotape back on the table, squinting at Ellen. "Did you do something different with your makeup?"

"Oh, this?" She closed her eyes, her eyeliner glossy and even and stretching beyond her lids to a fine point. "The Gomez kid dropped off my makeup bag yesterday. I thought it'd go with my manicure."

"It looks nice." Mae sat back, brow quirking. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you woke up in a good mood today."

"Some days, things just make sense," Ellen said with a small smile. "Oh, I almost forgot." She reached into the collapsed stack of holotapes, pulling one out. "Here."

"What's this?"

"Mixtape. Butch said it was for your eyes only." Ellen gave her a look that wasn't exactly affectionate, but it was damn close. It made Mae feel brave enough to grab it and head back to the relative privacy of her own cot.

She stretched out and stared at the face of the holo, her eyes roving over the neat handwriting, a weird quirk that she'd cataloged with a slew of other little details about him.

 _Mae,_ he had written out. Not Cohen. Not tin man.

She inserted the holotape, frowning as a list of names and numbers appeared on her screen. She scrolled through the many pages of data, slowly putting it together.

Butch hadn't given her a mixtape. He had given her something else.

Something in her chest slowly loosened as she went through the vault security schedule and assignments for the next several weeks, Stevie's name highlighted and italicized on each page.

Butch had made sure she wouldn't be trapped.


	17. Chapter 17

The first few nightmares were always the worst.

Mae had nearly forgotten how jarring they could be. She had been stockpiling and upchucking medication for so long that a steady drip in her vein distorted her dreams into living, breathing, terrifying things. Every bad thought she'd let run through her mind was fair game, twisted into something just familiar enough that she was gripped in a cold sweat. She woke up with a coppery taste in her mouth more than once.

When she started checking her teeth after the second day, she wasn't surprised Jonas had seen her.

"You're grinding them in your sleep," he confirmed during one of their (now) daily session. "You might need a mouth guard."

"You changed my dosage." It wasn't so much a question anymore. She felt the difference.

"We're trying something new. To see if it helps."

She shook her head. "It won't."

"How? What isn't working?"

She worked her jaw, a heaviness dragging at every action. "I'm desensitized. More so than usual."

"And you don't want that right now?" He watched her carefully, close enough she almost missed him make a quick note on his clipboard.

She felt like a blister without, just one squeeze away from bursting. But even then... "It doesn't work in the end. Never has. Take me off the drip."

Jonas sighed, rubbing his chin in thought. "The only way your father would even consider it…" He trailed off, looking through the window separating the office from the rest of the clinic.

She gripped the edge of the seat she perched on, the metal cold against her already cold fingers.

"You're going to have to prove you're willing to work on this. On yourself." He met her eyes, and she wondered if she had said anything while asleep. "You're going to have to do your part during these sessions."

He stood, hands in the pockets of his lab coat.

"Think about it," he told her, opening the door and heading back to Ellen to relieve her dad for the rest of the evening.

She stayed in the empty office, her grip on the chair keeping her grounded as she stared at her mother's favorite passage hanging on the wall for a long, long time.

* * *

Jonas helped fill in the slow afternoons. When she'd be as receptive as a husk, he would join Ellen for card games. Mae would always come back after several blinks, and she became a bemused spectator as they got into their element.

They razzed each other like old friends. She couldn't figure out how she had never put it together before. They were the same age, after all.

"She was that girl in class," Jonas told her over their third game. Ellen had won the last three, Jonas never stood a chance. "The walking guy magnet. All the boys wanted to date her."

Mae's brow quirked from where she sat in her cot. "Ellen?"

"Mrs. DeLoria," Jonas corrected her, but Ellen waived him off.

"Not _all_ the boys," she countered easily. "Nothing got between Jo Palmer and his crush on Mr. Brotch."

 _Old_ Mr. Brotch? Her nose wrinkled. Her own teacher wasn't what she'd call young, but his dad was a fossil.

"Jo." Jonas laughed, relaxed in a way Mae drank up. "No one's called me that since… wow, I don't even know."

"Since Bea's fortieth." Ellen flicked a piece of paper into the pot. A smile was tugging one side of her mouth. "You always did have a soft spot for the nerdy older fellas."

Mae watched Jonas blush, enjoying this immensely.

But as the evening progressed, her easy mood didn't last. She kept an eye on the door, despite her best attempts not to.

It was like a blow to the knees when he didn't show, the disappointment cutting surprisingly deep.

She pushed it aside, not willing to traverse that minefield yet, and stared at nothing.

* * *

"Trees aren't red."

Butch looked up from his coloring, grin blooming. "How would you know, pint-sized? You ain't seen any."

"Neither have you! And Mrs. Palmer said they're brown."

"We don't have brown," Christine said, going through the box of mismatched crayons. She was having no issues with her drawing, but hers was nothing but grass and rabbits under puffball clouds and a shitload of open sky.

"Well, they aren't red."

"Alright, alright, here, hold on." Butch grabbed an orange crayon and colored over the red. He then grabbed a blue and colored on top of the two. The result was an ugly mix that made the trunk look diseased. "How 'bout that?"

"That's brown!" Monica crowed happily, pulling the drawing out from under him.

"Hey, I ain't done yet," he protested as Monica skipped to the other side of the table to show Christine.

"You all need to put everything away now. It's bedtime for Monica."

Butch glanced to the kitchen where Mary Kendall stood wearing a damp apron and disapproval on her delicate features. Christine's mom was a looker, but her attitude never did her any favors. She kept her nose in the air. Like she'd stepped on shit or something. And she looked at everyone the same way, even her husband. Christine and her mom had always butted heads, so her using her little sister as an excuse to invite him over didn't surprise him. And while Monica liked spending time with Butch (for reasons even _he_ couldn't figure out), a major selling point to Christine had to be the pissed-off look her mother had and the fact that she couldn't say no to the youngest Kendall.

"Mooooom, can Butch come over for dinner again tomorrow?" Monica asked, face hopeful.

"Your father will be having dinner with us tomorrow, Monica. I'm not sure..."

"Nah, can't stay anyway, pint-size," Butch interrupted. When her face crumpled, he crouched. "We'll play Hunt the Mutie some other time. When the doc says you're okay to run around again."

"You promise?" At his nod Monica grinned, two of her top teeth missing. "Okay."

He ruffled her hair, and she squealed as he pulled her messy ponytail. "Maybe next time I'll give ya that haircut you need."

"What, no!"

"Brush it then. Unless you want it looking like a rat's nest."

Monica ran off, clutching her ponytail protectively.

He finally looked at the Kendall matriarch, trying not to meet her cold gaze. "Later, Mrs. K. Sorry about your husband's terminal."

Mary's mouth remained a stiff line as she turned and went after her youngest.

"You shouldn't even bother with her," Christine said from the table. She was still coloring, a serene look on her face.

Butch grimaced, hands in his pockets. The upper-level apartments were so different from his own. Dining area, full kitchens, their own bathrooms. It was enough for the bitter taste in his mouth to come back. "Yeah, well, imma go."

"Are you gonna mope?"

He frowned. "I don't mope."

Christine smirked at her drawing. "Of course not. Yet I just can't help but notice that you've been spending more time here with Monica than with Paul or Wally." She looked up finally, those eyes that noticed too much focused on him. "Does this have something to do with what you did to my dad's terminal?"

"Hey, how was I supposed to know that piece of junk would break down like that?" He'd counted on it, actually. Butch had overworked the old terminal after he got through the encryption on the holotape Paul had gotten for him. Better if it broke down than any trace of what he'd done stay where Officer John Kendall could find it. Not that Butch feared anyone would. Kendall was so by the book, it wouldn't ever strike anyone that his private terminal had been used to open files the Chief didn't hand out to the general public.

Christine didn't need to know that. Or how much he regretted doing it. After he had looked at the security schedule and finally placed who had been on duty... He wanted to kick himself.

Christine hummed, going back to her coloring. "If you say so."

"I do. Night, Kendall."

He left her apartment before she made more assumptions. He didn't mope. He just had too much going in his own head.

When he'd finally taken a good look at the schedule, he had found Officer Kendall and Chief Hannon had been on duty the night before he'd found her in the bathroom with needle marks. And where Kendall was by the book, the Chief was the one that wrote it. If they had been on duty when his ma had been out, and she hadn't ended up in the drunk tank… It was just another fucking dead end.

He scowled at the floor.

It hadn't been the only thing digging at him. He'd been thinking about her, too. And he wasn't liking it. Not at all. It was eating him up, how she'd pushed him away. And he never wanted a reaction like that again. Ever. It wasn't just rejection, although that was fucking humiliating enough. Just thinking about it made him slouch, hand playing with Toothpick in his pocket.

It had been easier before. When he hadn't cared. When they'd been kids and things were solved by a fist fight when it got out of hand. But it wasn't as easy as all that anymore. And the worst of it? That even after all this, it still wasn't enough to stop him from wondering what an actual kiss with her would be like. What she'd taste like if he was given the chance to try again. Properly.

If she ever talked to him again.

It had been simple with his ma. Apologize, a tight hug that said more than he ever could. A kiss on the forehead before she finally softened enough to say he was crowding her. Her way of accepting his apology.

It wasn't as easy as that when it came to Cohen.

Mae, he corrected with a shake of his head. It would help if he started thinking about her like that. Mae C. Cohen. She penned it on her homework, in her textbooks. He didn't even know what her middle name was. He wanted to ask her what kept that mind of hers working all night. What he could do to distract her from that haunted look she had gotten. He had gotten used to a sharpness in her. He wanted to see that again, even if it was directed at him. Maybe especially when it was at him. It was better than the other look, the coldness or even worse, the blankness she settled into sometimes.

She had asked for space. And he was doing as she asked, as hard as it was. It went against everything his body was screaming at him to do. And it had only been a couple of days, but... Christ, he was pathetic.

He'd have to have a talk with Paulie sooner rather than later, he figured. How would he start? Hey, I'm interested in your ex? She ever slug you when you kissed her, by the way? Or have I just lost what brain cells I have?

He reached the range and checked the lock on the door without any real hope it would open. Taking a pull from the flask at his waist, he leaned against the door, frowning at the emptiness. Not like he was in any hurry to go home. There was nothing but silence and his ma's boxed up booze, where his own disappointment would pile on what he already carried.

Remembering how good it was to be close, how warm and soft her mouth had been on his… How it had only clarified that he wanted more... If she'd let him.

The girl he'd bullied and been calling _tin man_ for years. He nearly scoffed.

Yeah, he was fucked.

* * *

Structured freedom was her own personal hell, she soon found. Beyond her daily sessions with Jonas and the blankness that followed after, Mae's hours were purposely empty. They invited brooding like an old friend, and with her usual failsafe tossed out the window, it took _root,_ crashing on her couch to take permanent residence there. Busy had become her best ally. That and staying out of sight.

She had lost both.

At night she would fall into a familiar nightmare. She was young and still needed him without reservations. She was chasing after him, following after the edge of a lab coat around a corner, the sound of his voice. She was never able to catch up, never able to get his attention. He would never look back, wouldn't hear her calling. She would only catch up after reaching a door. A door that was stuck halfway open. A broken closet. She'd find him, and she'd freeze. She'd stare, unable to look away. Until she was dragged away, hands rough and breath hot in her ear.

She awoke, eyes wet, throat tight. The bereft feeling from her dream bled through, and it made her feel nine again. She wanted to stop thinking. So so badly. But she couldn't let the numbness that came from an injection in her vein take over. She'd lose herself there.

"How do you do it?" Mae finally asked in the silence of the clinic. The lights were dim, set in sleep mode. Her foot bounced, perched on the edge of her cot.

"Do what?"

"Not go nuts?" She kept her hands crossed beneath her head, glasses on. She wouldn't take them off again anytime soon as she pretended to relax.

"It's a vacation," Ellen said quietly. Mae could almost make out the shrug, the dismissive tone barely there. "I'm not on my feet all day so it's a nice break. Maintenance has been short staffed for years and I'm usually working almost every day. Here, I'm waited on, drinks on the house. Not my choice, but…"

She stopped there and Mae turned to look at her.

"He wants me to get better," Ellen said so softly that Mae wasn't sure if she was meant to hear. But when Ellen continued, there was no doubt she was. "I didn't want to… I didn't like to think of it, but the way he… …" Ellen paused for a long moment. So long that Mae began to wonder if she would even continue. "I needed help. I need _help,"_ she said more firmly. "And I got it. If I didn't..."

The silence stretched out between them. Until Mae was able say with a steady voice, "I'm glad you did."

Ellen nodded, staring at the ceiling and Mae mirrored her, mind working until long after Ellen had drifted off to sleep.

Her hand reached under the pillow and she pulled out the holotape, running her fingers over the edges.

Maybes were all she had. Each a choice she could decide to pursue or ignore. Risks. All of them a risk. But choices needed to be made. She wouldn't be stuck in limbo like this forever.

For the first time in as many days, Mae finally touched on the sore spot. She let herself explore the still raw feelings she had about Butch.

The anger that hit her was sudden and intense. It rested on her shoulders, in her chest and core, as strong as the urge to do something. She wanted to knock him down, wanted him beneath her, the collar of his suit fisted in her hand as she raised him up to meet her and— and—

Mae slammed the door shut on this train of thought, her entire being alert and worked up.

She had no idea what he had been thinking. Or the reason she was reacting like this. It was enough to make her want to pull her hair out.

But as frustrating as that was… They needed to talk. Because despite everything…

She groaned internally, annoyed at the realization.

… Despite everything, her gut told her to trust him. Confused feelings notwithstanding.

 _We can't help you unless you let us._

The words rattled in her head. They wanted her to ask for help. They wanted her to work through her issues. The very idea made her want to hide from the direct light they wanted to shine on her, the burn that would follow.

But maybe... Maybe there was something to it. Possibly.

Either way, she needed to do something.

She grit her teeth. It would be on her terms, though.

She sat up, grabbing her boots and walking on light feet toward the door.

Action seemed a hundred times better than overthinking it, anyway.


	18. Chapter 18

A drained bottle of scotch sat on his dresser, uncapped, a smell that reminded her of band-aids wafting in the recycled air. His bed was in disarray, his reading glasses on the nightstand. But there was no reading material in sight, no glass set aside for the liquor he'd been drinking. Sitting on his bed gingerly, Mae found his sheets cold, his pillow fluffed and without a dent in it. James had stopped in his room briefly, but he was long gone now.

She took in the emptiness with an acrid taste in her mouth.

It shouldn't surprise her, really. And on some level it didn't. Work was his life, the vault had always needed James more than she ever could. It was either that or it was research, paperwork. Something. Always something. He was absent from some of her earliest memories, as far back as her toddling days when Lucy Palmer had helped watch her. She had grown used to it, adjusting after years of the same. The choice had never been hers to make, anyway.

She turned to her Pip-boy and added another to the list of scattered dates she had of James not sleeping in their apartment. She switched menus and the data that Butch had gotten came up, but she already knew what the schedule said: Kendall and Taylor were on duty until the early hours of the morning. Stevie wouldn't be patrolling when James was wandering in places he shouldn't while the majority of the vault slept.

Her shoulders eased a little at the confirmation. But the relief was brief as she wondered if finding James asleep in his room would have helped quiet her mind.

She shook the thought off almost immediately. It was irrelevant. Mae loved James, it went without saying. But anything beyond that was out of her grasp. Had been for a long time, trust decaying until it was nothing but a dead limb she dragged along with her.

Finding his room empty only made the lack of any real relationship between them clear enough she could taste it, like battery acid on her tongue. The smoldering anger in her belly twisted, stretching its talons. She let it.

Grabbing the empty bottle of liquor, she chucked it into the trash bin, the glass cracking as it hit the hollow bottom.

* * *

"I'm telling you, man, they were _nice."_

"So you said," Butch smirked, passing the bottle back to Paul.

Paul sighed after taking a swallow, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "You just had to have been there."

"And how would that work, dumbass?"

"Huh?" Paul blinked at Wally, passing the bottle over.

"You were dreaming, dipshit." Wally chuckled before tipping the bottle back, trying to hide his wince at the taste before passing it on. "'Sides, as far as I know, you haven't gotten into _any_ girl's suit to compare dream tits to the real thing."

Paul hesitated, slower and clearly more drunk than Butch had felt in the last hour. But a grin slowly spread on his face.

"I dunno, man. I've hugged Susie enough times-"

"Fuck, I don't wanna hear this shit."

"- and she always gives the _best_ hugs-"

Butch snickered as Paul and Wally got into it, a small scuffle erupting between them. With the booze safely in hand, he took a swig, slouched against the wall. His gang made it their personal project to help get rid of his ma's booze, and they'd been doing pretty good so far. He was warm from ears to toes, a welcome distraction from all the guilt-ridden thoughts he'd been having.

But as his vault brothers continued trying to get an upper hand over the other on the floor, he saw something, a flash of blue out of the corner of his eye. They were in one of their usual haunts, one of the larger utility closets in the upper level. Wally had assured them his uncle never checked this area when he patrolled the upper level, and so far, he'd been right.

But the sight of the vault suit slipping by made him pause. His heartbeat increased, his focus sharpened.

He straightened up. "'Ey, you two."

Wally looked like he was winning, and Butch nudged him with his boot.

"Imma take off. Kill the bottle, whoever wins."

Wally grunted and Paul wheezed in either laughter or from a crushed windpipe, Butch couldn't really tell. He set the bottle down with a distinct clink and gave the hallway a quick glance, heading in the direction the figure had been moving to.

He heard a hiss near the stairwell and swerved quickly, taking the stairs down. It was the closest stairwell to his apartment, and he took it as a sign that he was going in the right direction. He was almost sure-

"You're so loud."

He froze. And it wasn't until she straightened from a crouch by the wall that he spotted her. She had remained so still she'd disappeared into the gaps between the dim lights, a shadow among the others.

"You ever watch any of 'em ninja flicks?" He knew he was staring.

"You're drunk," she muttered under her breath. But he still heard it, her eyes pinned to him as he moved closer. They widened at his proximity, bright behind her glasses.

He grinned. "You got your glasses back."

"Uh... yeah." Her brow furrowed as she studied him, something like confusion in her gaze. She had her arms crossed, but her posture softened, hands dropping to tug at the material of her vault suit. He itched to take her hand in his, the urge thrumming in his veins. "Can we… uh, can we go somewhere?"

She turned pink when his grin widened at her request, a color that bloomed up from her neck, and a warmth that had nothing to do with the booze spread in his gut at the sight.

"To talk," she clarified.

He nodded and with a tilt of his head she walked with him.

Unlocking his apartment, he hesitated at the door. He'd never brought a girl to his place, never had anyone over other than his fellow Tunnel Snakes and even then it was not on a regular basis. His ma had asked him about it a few times, but he had never had the heart to tell her why he didn't. Never knew what state he would find her in, how the others would judge her.

But Mae didn't give him time to feel the shame that usually followed when he thought of this. She glanced around briefly when he turned on the light, eyes going straight to the couch and one of the throw pillows his ma had kept.

"Is that...?"

"From second grade, yeah." He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Listen, you want something to drink?"

She shook her head, picking up the saggy pillow, and a ghost of a smile appeared on her face as she traced a finger over the old stitches, Ellen in large, elegant cursive loops. "I can't believe you still have this."

"Yeah." He stopped before her, something about the late hour and the semi-darkness keeping their voices low. "Ma's a sucker for sentimental shit."

The smile grew as she placed the pillow back on the couch. She looked at him, the light shade of her eyes warm. "Your mom really loves you, you know."

It was his turn to redden. "Yeah, I know," he mumbled at the floor.

"Butch?"

"Yeah?" He glanced back up. Her eyes were still on him but they had sharpened, searching. He wished he had gotten some water, his throat dry at the look she leveled at him.

"Why'd you do it?" she finally asked.

A part of him wanted to play stupid and ask what she meant. There was a long list of things he'd done, after all, many he had tried to forget upon remembering. Looking at her now, at the stubborn set to her mouth, he was sharply reminded of the time he'd put glue in her hair. He had worked so hard on getting his own hair to curl just so, the pomp just right since he'd been twelve. In comparison, hers had always been naturally weightless, full and wild, and he remembered vividly how much he had wanted to touch it, to feel the texture of the strands, the occasional corkscrew. It had become an insidious thing.

But he knew what she was asking. It was in the stiffness of her stance, in the way she had clenched her hands into loose fists.

"I need you to be honest," she said, expression shuttered.

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I didn't think you'd... take that the way you did."

Shit, that sounded wrong.

And from the frown on her face, he was right about his guess.

"How did you think I would take it?"

"I…," He hesitated, feeling at a loss. Honest, she asked. His hand dropped abruptly and he straightened, looking her in the eye. "I'm sorry."

"So you've said."

"I mean it."

"I… I know you do."

A smile tugged one side of his mouth. "Yeah?"

She nodded, eyes still guarded. After a moment, she sighed, gaze dropping.

"You didn't ask," she said, staring at the floor. She swallowed, throat working before plowing on, "You didn't ask and after… after what happened… after the way you found me, I couldn't deal with you… with _anyone_ getting that close."

He hadn't been sure if he could feel like a bigger fuckup, but apparently, he could.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that."

He deflated. "Oh."

"Without any warning."

He studied her carefully, something about this whole conversation ringing with importance.

"Okay," he agreed quietly.

She let out a breath she'd been holding. "Thank you."

"You don't gotta thank me."

"For the mixtape," she clarified with a quirk of her lips. "It's very much appreciated."

He let a smile pull at his mouth this time, grinning at the floor. Maybe he should start with the only thing he was sure of. "I just… I wanna help."

Her brow furrowed, eyes the shade of smoke and just as opaque as she measured him. "... Yeah?"

"You said be honest."

He could almost see the way her mind was working, the careful chewing of her bottom lip. "Okay. But you're not gonna like it."

"Whaddya mean?"

"Can't run, you told me once - remember?"

He grew cold at that.

"And you were right. Running doesn't work."

"It's your best bet," he rasped. It was. Someone her size?

"It isn't always an option," she argued, raising her chin defiantly.

He watched her, wary. "What are you askin', exactly?"

But she didn't answer right away. She moved back, began pacing the short length of his living room.

"I froze," she said, voice low and quick, like if she stopped, she wouldn't be able to start again. "I couldn't defend myself. I couldn't do _anything."_ Mae exhaled heavily, her eyes distant, questioning. "It's not like that with you for some reason. I don't freeze. I don't hesitate. I react when you do something. Even to the dumb shit."

He felt his ears burn, a scowl twisting his mouth. "Gee, thanks."

"Don't pout. It's true. It's the only way we know how to get along sometimes."

They frowned at each other, but he couldn't argue their past. He had been beating himself up enough for it.

"So... what?"

She stopped her pacing and moved toward him, biting her lip again. "All I ask is that you let me work with that."

His brows rose. "You want me to be your punching bag?"

She shook her head. "If anything, I want to learn how to take a punch."

He wasn't aware that he had moved. Not until she reached out, her fingers cold as they wrapped around his.

"Listen, would you? Before you say no again." Her voice softened. "Please."

He shook his head. "This is a bad idea."

"I learn fast." She squeezed his fingers, and it made him stop, meet her eyes. Her own were hard. "I'm not as weak as I look. I just need to get used to someone attacking. I can do better."

Fate was giving him the finger, he was convinced. "You want me to take swings at you?"

"I want to learn how to _dodge_ them. Until I can do it in my sleep."

He glared at the floor. This had to be karma.

"You always cause a reaction. I always freeze when… when I get cornered. I can't face him again if that's gonna happen."

"So it's happened more than once." Stevie had hinted at it. Butch hadn't wanted to believe a word outta him.

But she nodded, gaze going blank. "Hadn't happened for a while. Thought he had forgotten about me. Hoped he had, anyway."

He wanted to beat him bloody. Had to settle for something far less as he stared at her jaw, as he threaded her fingers with his.

"You wanted to help," she reminded him, catching his stare. She moved even closer, her other hand going to his chest, pressing there. "This is me asking."

He sighed, reluctantly letting go of her hand as he dug out a cigarette and bit into it, rolling it unlit between his teeth. He needed to think, needed to clear his head.

But looking at her, seeing the determined set of her shoulders, feeling the way her hand curled on the material of his suit, he caved.

"Fine. Bring extra rolls of bandages next time we meet at the range. Like, a lot," he said around the cylinder, searching for his lighter.

He wanted to help he reminded himself as he lit up. He hadn't lied. He could ignore everything else for now.

And when she smiled, a smile that was feral at the edges, eyes fiercely bright, he continued lying to himself. He could do this.

He could work around his feelings. No problem.

* * *

Her day followed the same pattern as the ones previous.

Mae didn't sleep much at all. She napped on and off during the day, endured another session with Jonas and the numbing agents included when she didn't participate.

By the time she slipped out of the clinic, carefully pilfered supplies in hand, she was buzzing with restless energy.

She reached the range just after midnight and found Butch already waiting.

"Hey," she greeted with a small smile. She wasn't sure how this would work, how it'd turn out, but she was immensely grateful that he had agreed to it.

His brows rose in greeting, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes as he flicked his cigarette away. "Hey."

She unlocked the door and set her bag on the surface of a large container.

"I brought the bandages you asked for," she said, pulling out several rolls, "along with some gauze, antiseptic, a pair of tweezers, a couple of anti-inflammatories and some med-x. Dad's been pushing them on me so I finally took him up on it."

She stopped when Butch remained silent, finally looking over at him. "What?"

He was grinning. "You don't do shit halfway, do you?"

"Why do it at all?" She countered.

He looked curious at that, but he shook his head, grabbing the bandages. He pulled the roll loose and began knotting one end into a loop. He nudged his head towards her hand.

"Give me your hand, yeah?"

She did, wondering what he meant to do. But her thoughts fled when his hand closed over hers and he stepped close, a mixture of leather, nicotine, and his pomade hitting her as hard as the warmth of his chest behind her when he moved to look over her shoulder. He held her hand in front of them.

"You're gonna have to cut me some slack here," he began in a strangely subdued voice near her ear. He worked her thumb through the loop, wrapping the bandage around her palm and through each break between her fingers. "Haven't done this in a while."

Mae swallowed the lump she felt growing in her throat. "Looks like you're doing fine. Muscle memory's amazing."

"Yeah, but I've only ever wrapped my own hands."

He continued winding, turning her hand once to see how he'd done. He nodded, seemingly satisfied before finishing and starting with her other hand.

She felt his every movement, and the silence, coupled with his proximity, were heavy enough she felt the need to break it. "Who'd you learn this from?"

"My old man taught me, a long time ago."

"Your dad? How old were you?"

He shrugged, attention still fixed on the wrap he wound around her fingers. "I dunno. Five?"

Something in her chest grew warm at the thought, of Butch remembering something he'd done with his dad. She wanted to thank him again, but she remembered his words from the night before. How he'd told her she didn't have to.

So instead, she settled on, "My dad taught me how to shoot."

"The doc's a sharpshooter?"

She smiled, "I wouldn't go that far. I'm sure by now I'm a better shot than he is."

"Cocky, ain't you?"

She waited for him to finish with her hand, tucking the edge of the bandage in neatly. "I'm not cocky if I'm telling the truth."

It was his charmed grin that brought the butterflies to her stomach, big flapping things that fluttered as he shed his jacket and hung it in the locker before turning back to her.

He got into a defensive stance, something she recognized from seeing him scrap up close in the past. He lifted his hands in front of him as she flexed her own into fists around the wrapping.

"Alright, then, tiger." He cracked his neck and she heard the loud pop, saw the way he flashed a grin at her, the challenge in his eyes. "Show me what you got."


End file.
